This weekend one of my best friends, Henry, got married in Austin, TX. Jessica and Henry decided to have a small, but activity-filled wedding weekend for their immediate family and close friends. This is a recap.

Thursday: A red-blooded American bachelorin’

I land in Austin around 4:30pm and Matt picks me up from the airport. Since the wedding is Friday, we’ve decided that we need to have some sort of stag. The primary cast is going to be our high school friend group, that is: Me, Nima, Matt, Usman, and Henry. The plan is to drive to Round Rock, quickly say hi to my parents, pick up Nima (who lives in LA, and landed about an hour ago), meet Henry at Matt’s house, and get going. The wedding ceremony is at 8:30am Friday morning and Nima, recently certified for this purpose, is going to marry them. That gives us roughly 16 hours.

Halfway there, we get rear ended by a minivan. It turns out that the truck (Welcome to Texas!) behind her rear-ended her, causing her to run into our car. She (Amber, 19 years old, shoeless for who knows what reason, slightly overweight, and wearing a skirt that’s much too small) is pretty shaken up. Since the truck (Dale, 52 years old, balding, was attempting to meet his family at CiCi’s pizza) is sort of totaled, we have to call the cops and EMS and all that stuff. We spend about an hour filling out paperwork. Rant: Calling 911 when on a county barrier is a horrible experience. I don’t know what the hell county I’m in exactly, and aaargh.

Eventually we pick up Nima, drive back down to Matt’s house where we meet Henry, change, and head downtown to 219 west. 219 west is a sort of bar/lounge/American tapas place in the warehouse district. We order way too many things. I, in typical Dolapo fashion, start ordering shots for everyone. Then we head to The Belmont, which is a seemingly nice bar on 6th street with a gigantic roof deck.

At The Belmont, we make friends with our waitress (Rachel, 20-something, dyed blond hair, cute, boyfriend by the name of Jonathan) and proceed to drink crappy margaritas. We order more shots, dance with 30-somethings who want to know where they can score pills (Really, this happens to me way too often - the 30 year old thing, not the pills thing), order some shots for everyone near me, and then leave. It’s about 12:45am at this point, and the plan is to head to The Yellow Rose. The Yellow Rose has free wifi, but we’re going there because it’s a strip club. Besides, I don’t have my laptop. We can’t find a cab to take all five of us. Usman, foolishly confident that he can drive, drives me and him in Henry’s car. Matt, Henry, and Nima take the cab.

We buy Henry lots of dances and more drinks. At 2am, The Yellow Rose closes. We get in two cabs, headed for Kerbey Lane Cafe. Fact - if I’m in Austin, and I’m awake past 2am, it’s probably because I’m at Kerbey Lane Cafe. It’s possibly overrated, but I love the pancakes (and the queso, and the tortilla soup, and they serve Good Flow lemonade).

It would be unwise of me to speak in detail on what happens next, but includes:

• Leaving Kerbey Lane, not entirely of our own volition
• An angry Ghanaian cab driver, and correcting mistakes with a garden hose
• Trying to decide if we should leave the groom, possibly for dead, on Matt’s front lawn 3 hours before his wedding is scheduled to start
• Attempting to have a conversation about mamacitas and tejano music with Matt’s spanish-speaking and very inebriated neighbor
• Nima leaving lots of voicemails for Alice (26, went to high school with us, lives in LA, spent a weekend with the partychat crew in San Diego) about migas
• Henry’s head in a trash can

2 hours later we wake up for a day that’s scheduled to include: a wedding, paintballing in 104° weather, bbq, indoor rock climbing, a reception dinner, and another trip downtown.

I just know it

I’m going to be really upset with Past Dolapo for not buying new soap before leaving the country for Nigeria. I’ll really want a proper shower and be upset that he was okay with using up all the soap and then leaving. What an asshole.

Before I get back, I’m going to be upset with him for not bringing: an extra camera battery, more pants, a pair of shorts, more socks, some traditional yoruba garb, a bigger suitcase to bring things back in. Rookie mistakes really.

Hi mom and dad

But wait, there’s more

One of my favorite samples is now playing on iTunes. Kanye West - The Glory samples Laura Nyro - Save The Country, among other things, I love both of these songs.

Kushal has been trying to convince me to buy an apartment in Brooklyn for the past few weeks. He sends me links to amazing places. I’m not really sure what his endgame is here. It’s kind of hard to up and change boroughs. Owning is so permanent too.

What I really need is some sort of internship. I’d live under the supervision of an established Brooklynite. They would teach me the ways of the borough. What to do when it rains (which it always does). How to deal with girls without regularly pedicured nails. How to get around without reliable subways or taxis. How to deal with the large number of… minorities.

Will I be able to come back to Manhattan and hang out? Or will I be like this guy?

I tend to shake people’s hands a lot, I don’t know why. Sometimes I like to hug people, but only sometimes. The Yoruba custom when greeting elders is to kneel or prostrate. I’ve never been able to get used to this, it’s something that makes me anxious whenever I’m going to be in a group of Nigerian people. I can’t really bring myself to do either. As a sort of compromise, I tend to lower my head slightly and just shake hands. The same kind of compromising head-lowering that I use during unexpected prayers. It doesn’t really work. Besides having freakishly long hair at the time (see left, my cousin, right, with the more common haircut for people our age), things like this made me stand out during my trip to Nigeria in 2006. I had a pretty unnerving dream about this last night, one where I woke up sweaty with my heart racing. This reminded me of another dream I had earlier this week.

I’m standing outside with someone I can’t identify. Somehow part of my blood has been replaced with some sort of flower essence. This happens instantly and as far as I can tell, for no reason. Moments later I hear a horrible buzzing. Tens of bees swarm my face in what I understand to be an attempt to pollinate me. I’m freaking out, mouth clenched shut, eyes closed. They’re trying to crawl into my mouth, up my nose, into my ears. Their numbers are increasing. I’m being raped by bees and there’s not much I can do about it. I don’t want to be stung so I don’t try to kill them. Why isn’t my friend helping me out? The buzzing sound grows louder… and then I wake up. At this point, wide awake, I decide that what happens next is that I magically extract all my blood and live happily ever after. Crikey.

Susan got me a Diana+ camera for christmas last year during our road trip. The Diana is a plastic medium-format camera that was originally introduced in the 60s and has seen a recent resurgence among photo geeks (and wannabes like myself). It’s an-all plastic “cheap” film camera with all manner of manufacturing defects that result in photos that are blurry, vignetted (blurring around the edges), and rather low contrast. Basically, dreamy lo-fi photos. It’s a medium-format camera (120 film) so you get rather large negatives (12 5.2 by 5.2 centimeter) which are appropriate for printing large photos. It’s manual in a toy-like way. It has three aperture settings (f11, f13, f19), two shutter speeds (1/60 and bulb), and a focus dial that adjusts from 1meter to inf. Since the viewfinder does not interact with the lens mechanism in anyway — you’re basically looking through a hole — none of these settings can be previewed before a shot. Taking photos with it forces you to consider how your settings are going to affect the outcome, which you should be doing anyway, but with a modern camera you at least have a light meter. So, it has a bit of a steep learning curve, or perhaps “shoot and see” while taking pictures.

I shot two black and white and two color rolls on the trip. The black and whites are still at the lab but I was eager so I picked up the color rolls since they were ready. You can see that in a few of them the film wasn’t advanced the same amount for each picture. I think the lab should have been able to correct for this, but they were probably using a machine.

New Orleans

Red streaks and vignetting. I’m still learning to advance the film to the correct position.

These guys were nice and let me take their picture.

Mississippi

It’s tricky to frame the photos correctly since the viewfinder doesn’t interact with the lens in anyway. I was hanging out of the window while taking this shot, and though the car appears in the frame, I like this one.

Austin

Could be the opening of an exploitation movie. This is present day Austin though, on top of Mount Bonnell looking over Lake Austin.

This would be an annoying exposure on any camera but I decided to try it anyway. We’re inside where it’s rather dark and the outside (brightly lit) is in the center of the frame. In theory I should have exposed longer but there would be a giant glowing bright spot in the center.

Christmas evening with the fam. The mood here is very strange but I dig what’s going on with the lighting.

Day 3 of susanz and dolapo head south and things are going awry. Most pressing is that we seem to have forgotten some camera equipment in our hotel room in Durham. Wait. Some?? Okay, a 24-70 f/2.8L, a 10-22 f/3.5-4.5, and a speedlite 430ex. We’re not sure that we’ve forgotten them at this point - 1.5 hours from the hotel - and I’m convinced that it must be in the trunk.

That location, the trunk!, had become my default for anything that we couldn’t find within 2 minutes of looking in the car. It had to be in the trunk right? With my bike taking up a significant amount of space in the back, it was pretty tricky to poke around back there without getting your sleeves (or purse) all greasy. In my defense there were all sorts of curious things in the trunk, including 13 bags of Senegalese dried shrimp I was transporting across the country for my dad. Dried shrimp that had the amazing property of filling any space with that smell. Oh, that smell.

Anyway, at this point the mood is light, spirits are high. We’d just purchased this hat after all! The hat represents everything this trip is about. Taking in the local flavor. Making random decisions along the way. Buying hats! Not to mention that we’d just decided to skip Charlotte, NC all together and spend some extra time in the smoky mountains (A decision that would later lead to a scary, but awesome hike). Something responsible kicks in and I swerve on to the shoulder to double check that the camera bag is actually in the trunk. It isn’t. Shit!

We had been staying at a dodgy roadside inn in Durham and were convinced the cleaning staff would just take the equipment. I usually have a little more faith in people, but there was a drug deal taking place outside our window the previous night. Okay, I can’t actually confirm that it was drugs, but there was a strange man in a car for the better half of 2 hours who was periodically visited by people in other cars. Strange cars. He certainly wasn’t selling puppies — at least I didn’t hear any puppies, but it’s very possible that they were sleeping.

Why didn’t I triple-check the hotel room before leaving? Was I afraid of touching those bed sheets again? Perhaps the feeling of urgency to get on the road to Asheville? I hate forgetting things.

Searching for a solution we do the only sane thing I can think of - find a convenience store and buy some sugar babies. Fueled by 32 grams of sugar we manage to schedule a fedex pickup and delivery to our hotel in Atlanta. We’re at this point feeling relieved and ready to get on with the journey. 20% of the mood change is of course due to the sugar babies. They’re delicious. I can’t stress this enough. The other 80% belong to Candy - the clerk at the convenience store.

Candy was unexplainably sassy for the middle of the morning on a random weekday. Clearly she was hopped up on something. Perhaps something purchased from our dodgy inn buddy from last night? Or maybe just life? In addition to letting us take a lot of pictures with her, she let us in on all the hottest party spots in both Durham and Asheville. I wasn’t really sure what kind of party I was looking for so I couldn’t answer that question, but she dropped some names anyway.

My only regret on this trip* is not getting a chance to check out these parties. Perhaps in the future, with more time.

*Um, only regret other than spending an hour taking “olde time” photos in New Orleans. Bah, who am I kidding, those photos were awesome!

While opening up a new brokerage account:

Part of me wanted to see what would happen if I selected either of these options, but I tend to lose all sense of adventure when money is involved.

ak++ and aarti++ for hosting.

Random things too tiny, and possibly too stupid, for individual posts

Movies I’ve watched in the past 8 days in 5 words. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - Sexploitation! I really watched that? No Country for Old Men - Amazing, go see it. Now. Eastern Promises - Also awesome, avoid bath houses. Host - Koreans are lovable, tasty people. La Dolce Vita - Seven nights, Hedonism. Poor Rome.

This spinning beach ball of death is funny. It comes from Took my hands off your eyes too soon, at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea. Say what you will about contemporary art, but this gets a thumbs up in my book. It’s not worth a trip to the west side or anything, but if you happen to be in the area.

Snickerdoodles. Shortening or butter? Joy of Cooking is a butter recipe (is this because I have the new edition?) but I suppose I’ll have to try it both ways before declaring a winner.

I’ve been a recluse all weekend — I spent Saturday night listening to Lauryn Hill and making a new wordpress theme for the ol’ blog. It’s based on a recent photo and is supposed to be as minimalist as I can get away. No search, calendar, blogroll, shared items, widgets, etc. It should still feel a little like kubrick anyway.

And lastly, I’m going on a road trip from NYC to Austin mid-December. Are there any must-see attractions in any of PA, VA, MD, TN, AL, AR that I should know about?