Interest or not

Tag: travel

  • The world is large

    Very large. When I was a young boy I looked at maps and globes and learned where I was. I hadn’t traveled very far and didn’t know then how large the world is. One of my first memories of traveling far from home was when I flew from Denver with my sisters to visit my Grandparents in Fort Lauderdale Florida. I remember being in the airplane sitting beside the window and looking down to the ocean very far below.

    We were between the mainland and Florida over the Gulf of Mexico recently renamed as the Gulf of America. Eventually I saw land below and that was Florida. When we arrived in Fort Lauderdale my Grandparents picked us up at the Airport. One of the first things I noticed was the humidity. I could feel dampness in the warm air. It was thick and I loved it. I remember on the drive to their home looking out of the car window and noticing how different the trees looked from the trees back in the dry arid climate of Colorado.

    When we arrived at their condo a gate opened, and we drove under the building into a large parking garage. We got out of the car and put our luggage on a dolly with four wheels and a handle just like in a hotel. We rolled our luggage to an elevator and rode in the elevator many floors up to their floor very high in the building. Their floor looked very different from the lobby area of the condo where we stopped briefly. Their floor had several doors on it. We rolled our luggage to my Grandparents door where there were fancy decorations and entered there home.

    Their home was very fancy. It was clean and bright, and everything looked good to me. I noticed a large wall at one end of their home that was almost all window. With my Grandpa I walked out onto the patio. The patio was long with a solid gate built around it. The patio was the whole length of the building and looked out over the beach and shore and Atlantic Ocean below. That was the first time I saw the ocean.

    Later that day we put on our bathing suits and went down to the beach. I loved it. I recommend you visit a beach if you haven’t been to one. There is no beach in Colorado. We all had fun playing on the beach and I went swimming not far into the waves and ocean. The salt water and sand felt so good. The water was warm and the waves were powerful. We collected sea shells in a bag and enjoyed being together on the beach. I have many good memories from that summer vacation.

    Back at home in Colorado I looked at maps of America and the world and globes with a new perspective. I could see where Florida is on a map in relation to Colorado and looked at the dot on the map of Boulder in Colorado the city where I’m from and the dot on the map of Fort Lauderdale in Florida where my Grandparents lived. I saw the distance between the cities and looked farther. I’ve been looking farther since.

  • I unfortunately have done numerous crazy things in my past. Fortunately I’m making rational decisions these days followed by rational actions and have learned not to react to something I don’t like when there is no reason.

    One crazy thing I did was look online for love. I’ve heard of success stories about couples who found each other through dating websites, something I’ve had minimal luck doing. I decided I wanted to get married and convinced myself that I needed to look internationally online for a woman who was looking to get married. This was about 13 years ago. At the time I didn’t feel confident approaching women in person about dating.

    I was making other crazy decisions and actions back then but for this post I’m going to focus on the specific crazy decision I took upon myself to look for love internationally. I’m not saying looking for love internationally is crazy. People do it all the time and create loving relationships that last. I wasn’t confident enough to approach women in person about dating and resorted to reaching out through the internet hoping to find a lover.

    Have you heard the song American Woman by Lennie Kravitz. That song summed up my opinion about American women which left me looking outside of United States for love. I spent hundreds of dollars on contacting women in foreign countries through websites that offer the service of connecting couples looking for marriage. Not much came of it.

    I wrote a letter expressing my interest in finding love and marriage to no one in particular and posted it on to Craigslist “man for woman” long term relationship in San Jose Costa Rica. I received numerous replies to my post and after vetting the replies one specific reply stood out to me. A young woman who was a college student studying to be a Doctor and living with her sister’s family in San Jose replied to my post.

    I liked what she wrote to me. We started writing back and forth and eventually had a Skype meeting where we got to see each other and listen to each others voice on a live video meeting. I got my hopes up. I was falling for her. Five months later I boarded an airplane with my buddy in Denver Colorado and we flew to Miami and then from Miami flew to San Jose, Costa Rica.

    Long story short, it didn’t work out. We arrived in San Jose and the next morning when I met the woman in person I was hung over from cocaine I took the night before. The impression I made on her was lacking. I did my best to give a good impression. I was on time and brought her a fresh bouquet of flowers and when we sat at a table in a restaurant for lunch I knew within me then and there I was not ready for marriage. Our meeting went well although not as planned and the spark I thought we shared did not show itself.

    I went back to the hotel where I was staying and proceeded to do more cocaine. Would have a spark between us have lasted if I would have stayed sober and arrived chipper to our meeting I do not know. Other than doing illegal drugs I was making other irrational decisions in my life back then.

    I’m going to stay on task and continue the story. For the rest of the trip I hired a tour guide who brought me to historical landmarks in San Jose one day. The next day I hired the same tour guide to take me to a beachside Resort outside of San Jose.

    A cab driver drove us to a small town on the coast where I hired a small boat and captain who brought us over the open water to the other side of the peninsula. When we docked I hired another cab driver to drive us through the jungle to the Resort. I rented a room with two beds at the Resort and spent the afternoon on the beach and drinking alcohol at the tiki bar beside the pool.

    A guest arrived at the resort paragliding into the ocean and swam to the shore. The tour guide I hired connected with the guest who paraglided in. She was a Canadian and on vacation from working at a Spa. The next morning I left early to make it to my flight to Miami on time. I left my tour guide at the Resort and hired a cab to drive me through the jungle to the pier where I bought a ticket on a large boat with many passengers that floated us to the small town on the other side of the peninsula.

    Back on land I hired a cab driver who drove me directly to the Airport in San Jose. I arrived at the Airport early and eventually my buddy showed up. We flew back to Miami Florida and then to Denver Colorado. From the airport in Denver I drove my car home. The next day I returned the gifts I had brought with me for the woman I went to Costa Rica to meet at the store where I bought them and went back to work.

    Not long after that I got a call from her one evening while I was eating dinner at a restaurant and told her that I was hung over and had taken cocaine the night before our meeting. That was the last time I heard from her.

    The moral of the story is don’t do illegal drugs. Like I said there was other irrational decisions I was making back then and was not ready for marriage.

  • Evening in Medford Oregon

    I went to the bar just before dusk.

    A couple were seated at one end

    I traveled there alone and sat down on a corner stool.

    A big woman with long straight dark hair asked me quietly, “what are you having”?

    Do you have Heineken in a bottle? I asked. “Yes”, she brought me the beer and asked, do you want to leave the tab open?

    “I’ll leave it open”. I replied. Several people were seated along a wall gambling on big machines where the players pull levers down or press a button and hope for a winning score.

    A small group of younger men were gathered near a pool table focused on the balls at play.

    The bar has good food. Last time I ate there I got a plate of quesadillas with grilled chicken. I sipped the Heineken and ordered another.

    On television the Sandiego Padres were playing a team I did not recognize. Their opponents black Jerzy had a capitol A on the breast pocket area, white and silver. The television stats kept the opponents team a mystery to me. Padre’s were up 4-3.

    The couple at the end of the bar noticed the baseball game on television for a moment and seemed to be enjoying themselves. They are a Hispanic man and women in their mid-thirty’s. Several other couples were seated around the room at tables. An Oriental man appeared to have more than enough drinks to possibly walk home.

    It’s a quiet neighborhood bar in a small shopping center with a Domino’s Pizza and a drive through coffee shop. Joes, Bar and Grill. Is it a franchise or one of a kind? I don’t know, I enjoyed the beer and social environment.

    The waitress brought me a second beer and spoke up, I’m glad. It was good to hear her voice above the voices of patrons. I settled my tab then drove home.

    It’s early in the evening, Thursday in the all American town. Tonight will cool off some from the summer heat.

  • At a bar in town it’s almost last call

    It’s almost 2am. I’m in my home office at my desk. There are things to do. Often over the years I wake up early in the morning around 2am. I’m awake for a while then go back to sleep. It’s a cool spring night. There’s not much going on here. My neighborhood sounds quiet from here inside. In town it’s close to last call at a bar.

    Asleep in bed in my dream I was at an airport. Present day. A woman was having sex on a table in front of a group of people. Another woman was sitting on the smooth solid floor with her back against the wall and legs straight out in front of her. I walked to her and offered my hand to her. We walked away and left the airport together. I don’t know the name of the city where we were in the airport. We left on foot. She didn’t need to fly on an airplane. We left together.

    My grandparents had a membership to the Ogden Golf Club. When we were young children my sisters and I would visit our grandparents in summer. They brought us golfing at the club. I remember mostly practicing with a putter. The club had a pool were we went swimming and ate lunch at a restaurant. Back at our grandparents home my grandpa showed me a coffee cup with a hole in one message imprinted on it he won at the golf club.

    Earlier in the day I visited a book store. I’m 47. A woman at the book store sold me a Magazine about Oregon and told me of a good restaurant near the coast. The woman is beautiful. Her smile is pretty. The shirt she wore at work covered her tits. I thanked her for selling me the Magazine.

    Life is good