Post #31: Saltwater

This afternoon, I finished my training and I leashed my dog and I walked to the beach and I stripped to my underwear and I threw myself into the waves.

That's all.

Happy weekend, everyone.

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Post #34: Barbados Bye Bye

No one in Barbados has a last name. I learned this very early during my stay here. Whenever you meet someone, you get their first name and then an associative physical or geographical characteristic. "Hi, I'm Peter." And Peter is tall and bald and from Denmark and so that's how Peter is known to you from then on. When you describe Peter to someone else, those characteristics become that person's last name. Person A: "Do you know Peter?" Person B: "Maybe. Peter who?" Person A: "You know. Tall. Bald. From Denmark?" Person B: "Oh right - Peter!" What's incredible is that people fully accept that this counts as "knowing someone," and I can think of no better way to encapsulate my time on the island than that: a series of very intimate and personal connections, shared experiences, and fun where no one even knows your name. It's hard to say what I'll miss about Barbados because I believe that in time, this pl

Post #33: Rockfight

Anton Chekhov believed that every element of a story should contribute to the whole. "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise, don't put it there." A month ago, I was sitting in my driveway, talking to my neighbor. We were talking about fights in Barbados. I was curious to know how the men here typically behaved when a fight broke out. Did they throw fists? Was anyone quick to grab a knife? How often did shootings happen? Ever see some wild shit? She laughed and said that none of those things happened all that often on the island. She went on to note that of the three or four fights she had witnessed in her life, all of the men picked up a rock to use as a weapon. "Huh," I thought to myself at the time. "Good to know." Fast forward to this morning. I've been trying to get a new routine down since restrictions have loosened and gyms were allowed to re-open. I settled on this: wa

Post #30: The Kindness of Strangers

The current rules for quarantine in Barbados dictate that each new arrival spend five days in isolation before being re-tested for covid. I say re-tested because each new arrival is also required to produce a negative PCR test result upon touchdown, so travelers to the island will be tested twice in the space of eight days. Thanks to the unpredictable weather of the American Northeast, snow and ice delayed my flight for a few days, meaning that I was tested twice in six days prior to leaving. These details will become relevant in a minute, I promise. The afternoon of Friday, February 12th will be a memory that sticks with me for a long time. I had been in quarantine at the Moonraker since the previous Saturday afternoon, and I had taken my second covid test. I was waiting on my test results because I was desperate to leave the spartan confines of the beach shack for the more comfortable amenities of my posh apartment. There is a lot to love about the Moonraker, and my dog and I visit t

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