Adventure of the month

I've said it before but I'm lucky af. Or reventada, as my friend Ivon would say. You know how I know this is true? Because a fluke combination of circumstances recently led to me living in Fiji for almost four months. Meaning not only was I waking up in paradise every day, but on my days off, I could book convenient getaways to other nearby paradises. My first outing was to Vanuatu. I could babble about how it has always been my dream to visit this Pacific Island nation but that would be such total bullshit. Like most people, I had barely heard of Vanuatu. This might be why I was so fascinated when I met a couple from Australia who now lived in Port Vila. They painted such an appealing picture of this as-of-yet undeveloped tropical nirvana that I had no choice but to book my flight. With that done, I ran into the first obstacle when you are amongst the first to the touristic party. Try as I might, there were no hostels in Port Vila. Anyone that has read this blog, met me ...

I'd toyed with the idea of getting a proper underwater camera for a long time. I'd bought the disposable kind that you have to take into the store to get your photos developed... like a fucking cave person. I'd bought a cheapie one that produced meh photos and gorged on batteries that I never seemed to have on hand. It was a mess. When I made the decision to go to Fiji and swim with sharks- check out the last post for more details- I finally broke down and bought a GoPro. For the unfamiliar, this is a tiny but rugged camera that is generally associated with very physically active people. I am not that person. If you ever see me scaling the side of a mountain, know that there is some really scary shit is coming up from below. Honestly, I am surprised they even sold it to me. Anyways, all that aside, I now had an underwater camera. That same motivating factor, swimming with sharks, got me back into diving. I realize by phrasing it this way, it could be implied that at s...

In our last episode, our quarantined blogger looked back on happier times and began a list of the her favorite Fijian escapades. It has now dawned on this blogger person that even with the benefit of too much free time, this might be too ambitious an undertaking. There were a lot of great times in Fiji. Like a lot a lot. There is no possible way to list them all. Instead, this blogger- me, we are talking about me- will continue to try and hit some of the more memorable highlights. One that comes to mind right away was my birthday. Why was it so special? Well, for starters, I was in fucking Fiji!  On my birthday! That's pretty special. Add to that, my friend Iliana, who had just flown in from Miami. Which leads me to a story. Back in February, I had an airline voucher that was about to expire. I went on the AA website and started plugging in a bunch of "dream destinations" to see if I could make any of them work. I saw that for $1200 (minus my $800 voucher), I coul...

Full truth: This post will appear as if it was written in April 2019. It wasn't. Today's date is actually April 5, 2020. I, along with sensible people everywhere, am "sheltering in place", trying to ride out the Covid-19 epidemic that has brought the planet to a standstill. It is jarring and hard to believe that exactly one year ago, I was about to embark on a truly once-in-a-lifetime adventure. On April 9th, 2019 I landed in Nadi, Fiji. My co-workers and I were supposed to stay for an undetermined amount of time or more specifically as long as it took to get the Boeing Max up and flying. We all figured we had a couple of weeks, at best, before having to return home. We ended up staying until July 24th. The Max still wasn't (and still isn't) fixed but we ended up living in paradise for three and a half months. In that time, I took advantage of being based in this far-flung part of the world and dropped in on Vanuatu, Samoa and Tonga, all of which I pos...

Back in January, I had a couple of days off in Buffalo. To be clear, I think we can all agree that there are at least two things horribly wrong with that last sentence. 1. Up until recently, Buffalo was not a place I'd choose to be under the best of circumstances. 2. Anytime that you combine Buffalo and the middle of winter, that is anything but the best of circumstance. Yet here I was. Trying to make lemonade out of bored and bitter lemons, I figured that I could go to Niagara Falls and get some of those cool frozen waterfall pics that pop up on all those nature sites. Or to rephrase, when faced with the dilemma of what to do in the Siberian hellscape that is western New York in January, my first instinct was to get the hell out, even if it was to a possibly colder place.

I knew approximately three things about Portland: 1. It is located somewhere in the Northwest. Ask me to differentiate it from Seattle on an unmarked map and I would have, at best, a 50% chance of getting right. 2. Based on reporting by famed documentarian, Fred Armisen, it is a designated hipster preserve. 3. A new friend, who is earning cool points by the bucketful, has spent a lot of time there. As a result of this, he send me off armed with what some would call an exhaustive list of recommendations. Now here's one thing I did not know: 1. How cold it could get. By conflating it with Seattle, I pictured gray, rainy days but nothing that would require serious layering. I was oh so very wrong.

For the past six years, figuring out New Year's Eve plans has been pretty simple. Seeing as I live in a mid-rise in the middle of downtown Miami with a view to most of the area's firework displays, it was a given that the party would be at my place. It's always worked out wonderfully. We don't have to pay exorbitant cover charges. I got to play hostess, which I love, and my friends always had a place to crash once the party was over. Problem is, after my latest run-in with the evil that is mold, my apt is a demolition zone and not in the cool fashion-shoot kind of way. It's an uncomfortable mess and definitely not suitable for entertaining, no matter how much champagne we pour into little plastic flutes. Therefore, we were in need of a plan B.  This where my friends, Ivon and Sylvia came up with an always wonderful idea. A road trip. We would move this shindig to St Augustine.