Memory Lane

This post has little to do with pedicabbing but everything to do with travel, vacations, trips and memories.

Normally we're rather against the label "consumer" but that is what we all are to some extent.  Either air, water and food, or those three and much more.

I've spent the last week sorting through thousands of receipts mostly from 2006-2010. What I notice about these is multi-fold...

• They tend to pile up and go with you from apartment to apartment;

• Receipts chronicle your exploits more accurately than any blog can due to the printed cost, date, address and timestamp;

• They show your "consumer" metabolism -- in between jobs, few receipts, perhaps the telltale "EBT" on certain grocery receipts if you were really down and out.  Making money hand over fist but no time to cook? Lots of train tickets, restaurant receipts, parking receipts.

Thrown into the mix with receipts are business cards, brochures, flyers, scribbled notes or letters or diagrams; statements, knick knacks, coupons and point cards. I've had fun reviewing where I've been, what I ate.

Lan Zhou Handmade Noodle, 144 East Broadway, NYC 10002 Tel.: (212) 566-6933 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (212) 566-6933      end_of_the_skype_highlighting. "We Delivery" (A couple days after New Year's 2009. BEST hand-pulled and -cut noodles I've had in my life, except for Lin's grandmother's noodles, and cheap! Starting at $4.50 a bowl.  The owner pounds the flour out next to your head while you eat.)

Kimi Ryokan, 36-8, 2 chome, Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku, Tokyo 171-0014, Japan. PHONE: 03-3971-3766
(May 2009 super nice and super cheap "international house" hostel right in the middle of Tokyo. Say hi to Miho for us.)

City of Oakland parking receipt for 12/17/09, 02:05 PM. $2.00. Doesn't say where.

1 2 3 4 (front)
All sex maniacs pick 3 (back)
Compliments of Todd The Bubbleman 510-848-6017
(The guy in tie-die at the pasta stand, Jack London Square farmers' market, Winter 2010.)

Hand drawn map of Ikebukuro station and roads to nearest drugstores.
(I was helping a Chinese mainlander find safer baby formula for her sister on a layover. How do these people find me? May 2009.)

The pieces of paper jog my memory better than a polaroid can.  A polaroid photo has no date or other context.