Friday, July 20, 2007

Spain 2007

Contributed by Sam
Lights: Purple Fauxton, Photon Freedom
Location: Granada, Spain

... Ah yes..
Prior to my Flashaholism, I planned to head out into Spain for a summer trip... I was ever so generously provided a purple Fauxton key-chain LED from Saturnnyne. I also received a Photon Freedom night-vision-red key-chain light. Both, I felt at the time, were perfectly adequate. I also was generously lent a Inova X1 Gen1, although it was not in use at the time of the imminent story.
This part of the story involves the Photon... After traveling about a week in Spain I ended up in a city called Granada. I got there by a stroke of luck, after having met an American named Amanda in a train station of Sevilla. I took her suggestion to head out to Granda, so that we could see El Alhambra . . After a train ride to Granada, we made contact on the platform and flagged in a Taxi. She said that she had reservations at a hostel and that I'd be more than welcome to join up with her and see if they have extra space. Upon getting there, learning that they did not have any extra space, I was provided a clean sheet and a small mattress and told to sleep in the hallway next to the broom closet. Fantastic, right?... Well as night starts setting in, I realize that my belongings are exposed, and so I make my 'bed' and begin the evening stalk.. Granada was 80degrees at night, and so I decided to take a shower before all the other crazy travelers there start getting their groove on. Intially I walked into the rather large bathroom, searched for a switch to turn on the lights, but all I found was a plate on the wall that was asking us to put money in to turn on the lights.... Oh yeah?...Luckily I had my photon, and its clip!...So I clip it up on the top of the shower curtain and get a ceiling bounce of night-vision-red into the warming cloud of steam... Ah yes.. That's what I call showering in style.. Also too note, that I shower very quickly.. Less than 8 minutes from fully clothed, bathed, and dressed again.
.. After I had finished, I retreated back to my hallway to process dirty laundry into my pack.. As I did so, I switched to using the Fauxton just to get better color rendition on the items in my pack..

It was then when another person comes up the stairs and enters into the area where I am.. He sees my little light on and comes over to check it out .. We greet each other and he asks about it, so I hand it to him and tell him it's un luz de destello, or a flash of light... So for some reason he's really impressed by it, and outright offers to buy it from me.. It seemed really funny to me, and I laughed to hear him say that he'll give me 10 euro for it...Ok.. You can have it for 10 euro...Nicer too was that he let me use it to finish up my pack, and then handed me a handful of coins and took the light with him to his bunk... How about that...$13 bucks for a .50c key-chain light.

.. Luckily still I had my Inova X1, but that's a different story.