After that I drove my busted Hong Kong phone all the way out to Brampton for repairs, and got some valuable insight into Ericsson handsets -- don't buy them, they're crap! And when they inevitably break down you have to get them shipped to Texas, because Ericsson Canada ain't nothing but a website now...

You may remember me chickening out of a scooter rental when I last visited the Devil's Triangle (see my March 22nd entry for details). This time I relented, at the insistence of Ray Deonandan, and backed up by Sean McLoughlin, the third member of our tourist posse. The deal was this: The scooter rental company was to bring three members of their fleet directly to my brother's seaside estate; that way, we could tool around the back roads until we had enough confidence to head out into some real traffic. But somewhere along the way, the scooter people decided that it would be easier just to bring us into Hamilton, to the same busy downtown street where I had barely passed my last "driver's exam" -- that is, riding up the street, turning around and coming back again. Hey you try it when everything's on the wrong side of the road!

Thankfully it was a Saturday, so traffic consisted mostly of cabs and other hesitant scooter pilots. We got as far as the ferry docks -- a whopping three blocks away -- then took off on foot for breakfast. We returned hoping to put our rides on a ferry bound for a less-inhabited corner of the Island, but through a miscommunication with the ferry staff were forced to set out on scooter instead.

Well, we hadn't even made around the first corner when Mr. Deonandan himself went down, citing the similar motions of braking on his bicycle at home and pulling on the scooter's throttle as his downfall. As I kneeled beside him on the ground, checking out the gash on his leg, Ray threw himself back on the pavement, as if to say "Oi vey!" or something similar. But in this particular case the drama was quite real -- the guy had blacked out on me!

The only thing I could think of was the possibility of him choking on his swallowed tongue, so I immediately sat him upright, at which point he of course came to, wondering what exactly my fingers were doing in his mouth.

Sean and I took Ray in a cab to the nearest hospital, where he made the most of his travel insurance and got himself a wound dressing, x-ray and cat-scan, for a grand total of $2000 (Bermudian). And while Sean sat vigilantly by Ray's side, yours truly faced his fears and conquered the backward roads of Bermuda!

Okay, now look at the photos, and some yokels while you're at it...

Perhaps to punish me for putting something on the Internet while drunk (yeah, like that's never happened), my Visor slipped out of my hands the next morning, hitting the floor hard enough to crack the case open, and worse, to severely hamper input to the device. Then my cell phone, maybe hurting from the severed Bluetooth connection, went on the blink.

Thank goodness I still have my desktop Mac, my iBook and three other cell phones....

I won't bore you with details; let's just say I'm still trying to come down off the natural high of Tuesday night past. Apparently my Second Cine show had the biggest Tuesday turnout at The Tim Sims in years, and some of the patrons weren't even comped! Once yours truly found his legs as an interviewer, he had an absolute blast! I've already got a couple of films lined up for next month's show, so mark Tuesday, July 2nd on your calendar... You won't want to miss it.

Unfortunately I had to turn down a invitation to plug Second Cine on CTV's eTalk, or TalkTV, or some shit like that. Instead I will be premiering my first-ever PowerPoint parody for a lucky corporate client. I'll throw it up here next week so you can see it for yourself.

Since I'm a little tipsy, I'm willing to entertain any questions you may have, in real time. Hello? Anybody out there? Oh wait, this isn't ICQ...