The Pilgrimage

We're going on a pilgrimage. We just realized that our train passes are valid starting today, so we need to take a long trip to start it off.

Fourteen hours to the island prefecture of Shikoku sounds about right. In Shikoku there is a traditional 88 temple pilgrimage through the countryside and woods that covers 993 miles. Most people do it in 40-60 days on foot, although others wimp out and take the bus.

We don't have time for that, unfortunately, but we're going to head out tonight and walk for a day or two.

Nine out of Ten

Eight years ago, I lived in a house that we called Project Hollywood. A group of the four best pickup artists in the world-- and me-- rented out Dean Martin's old house on Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles. This was a big deal in the pickup community, and it spawned clones all over the world. One such copycat was Project San Francisco, six hours away from LA. Mystery and I drove up there one day to check it out.

We were both immediately stunned with how well Project San Francisco was run. We were shown to our guest beds, given guest sets of keys, and guest towels. The whole house was clean and well organized. Our house, on the other hand, was chaotic. It was usually a mess and no one really took responsibility for anything beyond their own bedrooms. Generally it was only clean if someone had a girl coming over that he wanted to impress-- and then he cleaned it himself.