Hello from Miami Beach,
What a week it has been… two presentations in Vancouver, one presentation and two panels at the Passport to Freedom conference in Las Vegas and tomorrow a presentation at the North American Bitcoin conference. I got in late to Miami today and so I missed the first day of the bitcoin conference but I have been told by organizers that it has surpassed their wildest expectations. They were expecting around 500 people but 1,200 were there on the first day! I'll be speaking at 11:30am on Sunday should you wish to come out for the event.
From Miami I'll likely be back in Acapulco briefly and then on to the TDV Wealth Management Crisis Conference in Panama starting on February 5th.
I travel so often I sometimes forget where I even am or where I am going! I just checked in earlier today at the Las Vegas airport and they asked me where I am going today. I stuttered, "Uh, Las Vegas," receiving a confused look.
"But, this is Las Vegas," she said.
"Oh," I said, looking around to verify that she was in fact correct.
"Where are you going today?" she asked still perplexed.
"Uh, one second, I'm not sure," I said as I fumbled through the calendar app on my phone before remembering, "Ah, yes, sorry, Miami."
It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to go through the TSA so often and get half undressed sometimes three times in one day and dealing with the usual airport security theater.
My week started off with a connection through Phoenix en route to Vancouver. When we first arrived from Mexico City to Phoenix I had gone outside for a cigarrette with a Wired Reporter who had been foillowing me around when a short, fat lady in some sort of security guard outfit came up and told me that I couldn't smoke there.
I asked her why, because I was standing outside and didn't understand why I couldn't and she told me, "There is supposed to be a sign there that says non-smoking… but it's not but you still can't smoke."
I was a bit confused by her answer but thought I'd ask where I was allowed to smoke.
She seemed to be getting quite impatient with me and pointed at some silver trash cans about 100 feet away. So, I aqcuiesed and we walked down to the silver trash cans and continued smoking when she came running up.
"Do you want me to call the cops?" she yelled.
I stood quite shocked at the question… "Didn't you tell me that I could smoke by these silve trash cans?"
"Not these silver trash cans, those silver trash cans," she said, pointing at one about ten feet away.
"Do you want trouble?" she barked. "I can give you a $50,000 ticket for smoking here!"
I looked at the Wired reporter in shock and he was equally surprised. Fifty thousand dollars?? I had also just been explaining to him why I hate coming up to the US from Mexico because the US is such a police state. And, this happened within five minutes of our arrival in the US! I put out my cigarette rather than having to nearly go into bankruptcy for smoking at the wrong silver trash cans.
We decided to head back in and get ready to take most of our clothes and have trick questions meant to catch terrorists ask of us like, "What's your name?". We made it through to the microwave machine and I winked at him and said, "Do you know how you can avoid getting cooked in the microwave machine and/or avoid the patdown also?"
He shrugged, "no," and I proceeded to go to the front of the queue of people waiting to put their hands over their head in the microwave machine and mentioned to the TSA guy that I had recently hurt my shoulder and couldn't lift it over my head for the microwave machine.
He responded the same way I have seen in my 50+ times of trying this in the past… he just shrugged and said, "Oh, okay," and told me I could just walk through the metal detector.
What I didn't realize though was that it could have been dangerous this time around. The reason? Well, as I looked back smugly at the Wired reporter after I so easily passed through he smiled. What I didn't know until later, however, was that the TSA guys were watching us and saw us smiling at each other and the Wired reporter overheard them say, "Keep an eye on him…. if he lifts his arm over his head we will go f**king crazy on him!"
I don't know exactly what that means but once the reporter told me about what they said I didn't lift either of my arms above shoulder height until we had gotten out of US airspace!
We finally did get on the plane and I mentioned, "You see what I mean about it being a police state here? We were only in the US for one hour and I got threatened with extortion of $50,000 from one cop and just because I didn't want to be microwaved nor have an intrusive, sexual molesting patdown and said I couldn't lift my arm to avoid it I nearly had two more government goons go "f**king crazy" on me."
After having spent the previous night in Acapulco, driving around, drinking wine in the vehicle and smoking anywhere we wanted without a cop in sight he gave me a knowing nod.
In any case, I have just spent 18 hours in Miami and while I consider it to be one of the best places in the US it is still a delapidated, fake, third world place.
I will just leave you with this awesome video and, hopefully, I will successfully escape from this horrendous place and return safely back to Mexico tomorrow.
