Kilometers Driven: 97 In September 2003 I applied for, and acquired, my first job. In Brunswick, Maine, job options for local teenagers are limited due to how small the area is, and having to compete with the older, more 'mature' and often more experienced students of Bowdoin college, its kind of a tough market. I had an advantage however, I didn't go to school. Having dropped out 3 years previous to self-educate and focus on my performing career, I was perhaps the only teenage applicant that had enough time to work most days, all day. Plus, I could juggle, was a quick learner and so when I spoke to Paul Faustine in his 100 square meter toy store, he was all to happy to bring me on. I had just turned 16 years old. My years in the toy store are some of the best in my life's memory. It is rare to find a job where "having fun" is mandatory, and not in the flowery, Apple Store, "grin, shake, sell" kind of way. We genuinely had fun, and to this day I cannot believe what I was encouraged to do at $10 an hour. Working at Red Dragon changed my life, gave it a completely different focus, and lead me to pursue my first work out of college in the toy industry; which even by Junior year had turned into a career of product design and international marketing for several of the world's most prestigious private manufacturers. It is needless to say therefore that toy stores hold a special place in my heart, and is why our time in Ronda today, though filled with many impressive sites, is dominated in memory by one of the greatest toy stores I've seen in a long while. Privately owned, mom and pop toy stores have been the triumph and struggle of many wanna-be fun providers. While somewhat easier to do in Europe than in the Walmart and Target dominated USA, its still rare to find one here that is larger than a broom closet, or stocked with any kind of care or genuine interest for the products on sale. So while this place may not be as young and upbeat as Red Dragon was (the store sadly closed down several years ago), it is as lovely an environment as be can imagined, and almost an hour quickly disappeared as I browsed, played and chatted my way through every product on the shelves. Our roaming through Ronda afterwards were rewarded with a serious of impressive historical sites. The towering 120 meter Puente Nueva bridge. The ancient Arabic bath house. And simply the village itself, perched on cliff faces as it is, makes for an impressive site; its white town houses gleaming in the sunlight over the dark valley below. Regrettably, it is touristy, a kind of stop over for the many people going to and from Malaga and various countries of the north. But being off season as we are, the small crowds of photo-hungry tourists were just an opportunity to blend in, and we relaxed into the site seeing, and shopping, groove for an afternoon before heading into the misty mountains in search of a park place. To be continued... Special Events: Hiked around base of Puente Nueva Bought a fancy Phillips shaver!
