Another week has passed and another interesting and active weekend in the books. On Friday, John invited me to whack at some golf balls on the driving range – something I’ve never done. The last time I had any sort of golf club in my hand was about 10 years ago and the windmill and hills on the artificial turf wreaked havoc on my game. It was at a kid’s birthday party; maybe one of mine, maybe one of their friends.

On the range, I didn’t do terribly well, but I didn’t do terrible, either. Middle of the road, that’s me. My swing though, that is terrible! After an hour or so on the range, we hung out at the 19th hole for a while before resting up at the beach club and having lunch. Then we went to a bar. I have to stop drinking so much, though; I’m getting round. Interesting to note that my resting heart rate is noticeable higher nights after I drink more, and later in the day. Sometimes approaching 50. Something else to ponder.
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This is Carnival week here in Panama. A celebration that begins on Saturday, and ends on Ash Wednesday, with the culmination on Fat Tuesday. The cars were exiting Panama City in such numbers the police had closed off one inbound lane, converting it to outbound. They did that on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It makes for some challenging and slow going if you’re going anywhere else. And I did.

On Saturday, I’d been invited to Micah’s for Sam’s birthday. Casual time in and around the pool with burgers and dogs on the grill, and beer in the cooler. John and I decided not to drive because (a) alcohol, and (b) traffic. So we parked his truck at El Rey at the entrance to Coronado, and did some shopping for appetizers. As we were checking out, Micah texts asking for beer and wine. We park what we have past the checkers, and dive back in. The stores are crowded with celebrants, so it was busy. We get the stuff (a case of brew and six bottles of wine), and track down a taxi for the ride to Buenos Aires. $12 is the negotiated price, and we pile in the drinks, snacks and our bodies and take off. If John wasn’t there to negotiate, I’m sure I’d have paid $20 for a similar ride. Language helps!

Long drive, traffic forces us to go way past the turn and double back, but we get there. Good times, good burgers, and good dogs – both the kind you eat, and the kind that wants to eat your food. I’m talking to you, Luna and Odin.
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Then it was off to a birthday dinner on the beach. This part came as a surprise to me, but, heck, roll with it, eh? We pile into two cars and it’s down the hill, All we needed to do was cross the highway less than a K to the left. Seems simple, but nah. We had to go right for K after K after K before Felix did a sneaky turn he wasn’t supposed to and doubled back. What would normally have been a 30 minute drive was an hour, and would’ve been more, if not for sneakiness.

We get to the Pink Palace on Punta Chame, and it’s a great place. Laid back, quiet. We spent some time whacking golf balls off the sand with a three-wood, drinking (yeah, I know, more drinking) before an outstanding dinner of cranberry walnut bread, hummus, tabouli, Thai curry, gorgonzola pasta, and key lime pie, all made right there by Panama Peg. We ended the experience with a bonfire and Frangelico. Yum.

Sunday, I went to an orphanage with a different friend. Amanda, from Australia, started a foundation to help with the place. She needed some signatures and asked if I wanted to go. Decline? Not me. We hop in to a cab and ride nearly all the way back to Panama City. The orphanage was really quiet because all the kids were on an excursion Sunday. We did see the infants, though. Poor buggers weren’t invited on the excursion.
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I just hung around while Amanda got done what she’d come to do, then it was back in the cab for a LONG ride back to Coronado, because, traffic. Got to Coronado, and the Mexican restaurant she wanted to hit was closed. Flag down a cab, and we go closer to home to Luna Rossa, and get a really good pizza. The crust was wafer thin. Snarf that down, and no alcohol. Go me. I needed that food, though, it was about 2:00 pm and I hadn’t eaten since the key lime 18 hours before.

It was nice not to hear about various shit storms going on in the world and just spend time with friends in a beautiful place. It’s now Monday, and I need to run off some of the calories. Maybe today will be the day I’m successful in my limbo attempt at the entrance gate. So far, my attempts have only been successful at making the guards laugh. A win in my book, regardless.

What to think on a day like today? War, pestilence, hate. It's a lot to try to take. It's really disconcerting to be somewhere other than the comfortable, known locations where I was born and raised. Yeah, I get the same news feeds here that I did in the States, and yeah, I can chat up the same people I did through the same electronic channels, but there is an undeniable feeling of isolation and aloneness being thousands of kilometers from the place my passport was issued. 

There are a lot of questions in the air, and a lot of unknown issues facing us these days. Sometimes it's enough to get out of bed, and call it a day. Today is a day I can do a little more, but not a lot. Motivation for much is out the window. I think I'll go to the beach and watch the ocean for a while. If I were in Bloom County, I'd stand in the dandelion patch with Opus. No running. No working. Maybe I'll disappear in fiction later.

Anyone reading this, grab who you love and give them a hug. If the one you love doesn't give a shit, hug 'em in your dreams. These are dark fucking days; hang on to what positives you can, and find your dandelion patch, or come join me in mine.

Meanwhile, here's Clyde the caiman, and dancing sand crabs.

It's hard to believe, but another week has passed. I've now been in Panama for more than a couple, and to be honest, I need to look at a calendar and count just how long I have been. (Checks. About six weeks.) The days go by with an easy fluidity and pace. Morning coffee, sometimes a run, read, go shopping, write, walk the beach… There is such an ease to things, that it's so simple to get sucked in and lose ambition and drive – not that I really have a lot of that in me anymore.

All that being stated and out of the open, it was nice to make a small change over the weekend. Friday night began Thursday with the usual "go to Picasso and listen to trivia" as I sit in my now-usual place at the bar. I get there late afternoon, and sip on auga tonica con limón, read on my Kindle, and watch the number of patrons grow. It's Trivia night. It's the night all the ex-pats come out and socialize, and TBH, drive the staff batty. Lady, it's a small kitchen, and there are fifty orders ahead of you, it's going to take awhile, mmmkay?

A couple sit at the bar next to me. I being my usual shy and retiring self, stick my ugly mug into their conversation and introduce myself and we all semi-play the trivia game. They are Harry and Wendy from the Twin Cities area of Minne-COLD-a in the good ol' USA. We chat awhile, agree to meet again on Friday, and we split.

Cue Friday. I return to Picasso, and station myself a bit before 5 at my usual spot. Bill (an ex-pat from Australia/UK/USA)and Dingo (his dog) show up and take his usual table. We chat over a Bucket o' Panamas for me and a couple singles of Balboa for him. He's off to dinner with a friend (and Dingo, natch, cuz Dingo goes everywhere), and I thought chances were good that I would be meeting Harry and Wendy, and maybe up to three others (John, Bruce and Amanda) as I had either directly invited them, or in John's case, if he was done with the golf tourney, I might hear something and he could join. Doing the math, I thought a bucket would be a good start.

Time flies, and Dingo and Bill leave, and I'm back in my spot at the bar, several beers down on the bucket and nobody has arrived. Not unexpected, to me. Plans are fluid, things change, and communication with new friends isn't always readily available. I order a Fuji roll of sushi and plan for a quiet night.

Just as my roll is about to arrive, Harry and Wendy roll in. Hold off on the sushi to coincide with their pizza. It's Harry's birthday, so we transition to celebrating in earnest. Several hours, many cocktails (them) a few more beers (me) and shots (all) later, we're the only ones left in the place. Glen, our server, invites us to join him, and the some of the other staff at a locals bar afterward.

What?! A local invite? Not just yes, but hell yes! I didn't get back to my place until close to 3 am, and we left early. Our table went through a couple of cases of beer, and an entire bottle of whiskey. Conversation was difficult because of (a) the volume of the music, and (b) only Harry, Wendy, Glen, and Bryan and I spoke any English. But, somehow I got the phone number of someone's tia in my phone who I had said I thought was cute. A tremendously fun, but blurry, night. I realized after the fact that I didn't get a photo with Harry and Wendy. I'm not pleased with myself about that.

Saturday dawned a bit rough. I skipped running, but did walk the beach a few times. John and I chatted about getting out of Coronado. He's a Zonian so he fits pretty comfortably in both local and ex-pat worlds. We make a plan to visit Micah (an American), who with his partner Samantha (Sam), has bought a place in the hills recently. It's about a 30 minute drive on the highway, then winding, steep, not-t0-any-DOT-on-the-planet-code narrow roads culminating in dirt paths that are one car wide with no room to slide past. In other words, awesome.

Micah and Sam are building a spectacular compound that they intend to take mostly off the grid, with wind power. They've got a lovely house, veranda, and are building a observation deck, and casita tucked into the hillside above the pool. They were such gracious and generous hosts, and we spent hours and hours in the pool, on the veranda, on the observation deck, drinking beers and discussing...everything from what constitutes classic rock (apparently the genre include the 1990s now) to the neighbors, to dogs (theirs are Luna and Odin), to travel, to jui jitsu, to wildlife, to weather, to golf, to failures with Multi-Factor Authorization when out of the USA and they only want to continue to send texts to a cell number that doesn't work here and I can't access my account to change it to email. That last one might have just been me.

Another couple, Felix and his wife (sadly, I don't remember her name), showed up and we had a lovely dinner of smoked chicken, rice & beans & chorizo, and cabbage. Cabbage? you think. Yeah. it was seasoned, and wrapped in foil on the grill. It was amazeballs. Felix is the general contractor for the work Micah is having done. He's lived in the states in Ohio for a bit, so his English was great. His wife's English is on par with my Spanish, so we had difficulties talking. All good though.

Darkness has fallen and yeah, it's dark. It's also time for John and I to roll on down to the coast, and it's decided that I would drive at least to the highway. Why me? Good question. I'd quit drinking about four hours earlier, and was sober. John was not as sober. And, apparently, the police regularly set up checkpoints where every driver blows into a portable breathalizer, and if not a local, has to show a passport to prove they are not in the country illegally. Nothing really egregious, but that kind of stop that can elevate the cortisol levels for a gringo like me. Experts at the party put the odds at fifty-fifty that we would encounter one. The advice was to speak English, no Spanish, wear a mask and be stupid. 

I can do that, I think, that's just being me! The chatter about coughing, repeating the word "Covid" and claiming to be on the way to the hospital I dismissed as hyperbole.

So, I, who haven't driven anything since October and haven't driven a stick shift for a couple of years, take the driver's seat in a VW manual transmission, diesel truck for the trip down. Did I mention the road is winding, steep and super-duper narrow? Yeah, and now it's dark. Each car we encounter has their brights on. Swell. The cat crossing the road, a few dogs thinking about it, and the number of people walking sort of along side the road all contributed to the "adventure" of the drive.  

We must have timed it well enough so that the checkpoints and police presence had wrapped up. We did see a few police cars but they were moving off, apparently just finishing and leaving. Back at my apartment, I realized I had misplaced my mask somewhere between having it on my face leaving Micah's and starting the truck. It's either in the dirt outside the gate or somewhere in the truck. I'll get it later. Or not.

Micah and Sam have invited me to come again, and said we would take a side-by-side through the forest on 4x4 tracks. That sounds like a lovely adventure. Maybe I'll get to see the scorpions and snakes they were talking about.

Not a lot happening here in the tranquil tropics. I run, I read, I walk, I write. The acquaintances I made over the previous few weeks have drifted away: either back to their homes in other places, or just...away. In general, I think that's the nature of a nomadic existence. People come and people go. Much like myself: I arrived a month ago, and I don't know where I'll be in another month. I will be here until at least mid March, because both loin-fruit are traveling south for a visit. Can't wait!

We're going to spend a few days in a rainforest reserve (Gamboa), before closing out the visit chilling here with beach, pool, and low stress living. Certainly not glamorous or anything like the south Florida spring breaks that were the subject of a fair number of movies in my collegiate days. 

I've been window shopping on the dating apps a fair amount since I've been here. Window shopping meaning I'm looking, but with no intention to buy. The few times I've had a match, I've yet to meet the person. All except one have ghosted and unmatched. Whatevs. In the one instance that I wasn't ghosted, the universe has decided that we are not to meet. The first time we arranged, an accident on the one road created a two hour delay. Coupled with a late start, and that one went to hell. She turned back.

We made tentative arrangements for another try. That is on an indefinite hold, as she is a humanitarian aid worker for the UN, and got travel orders to Kyiv, leaving this week. Her return ticket is for the end of March. First off, Kyiv?! Scary thought to go. Second off, I don't know if I'll be here at the end of March, so, maybe that one's down the tubes.

I have met and chatted with an Australian woman who has a significant resemblance to Nicole Kidman. We've crossed paths on the beach a few times, but I'm not sure that has any legs, though she does. 

I developed a route to run that includes two Strava segments, and a stop by Clyde's Pond. Clyde is the name I've given to the caiman I've seen several times in the pond. Alliteration for the win. Anyway, the first time I ran the route, it measured 6.66 miles. I thought that was interesting. Given the vagaries of GPS, I didn't think a lot of it, because the next time I run it, it'll be longer or shorter by probably a few percent. Especially since I hang at Clyde's for a bit to see what I can see, and often times, GPS will add a "jitter" distance while I'm standing still.

However, in the three times since that initial run, my distance has been 6.66, 6.68, and 6.66. Huh. Pretty consistent  measurement. Maybe the tech is eliminating the errors. I now call the route Runnin' With the Devil, and I hear Van Halen in my head when I'm jumping through the surf into the sea at the end of the run.

In regard to the writing, I've been working on a story I started a while back and shelved for a couple of years. It's been nice to flex the imagination muscles in my brain. Here is a link to read the first few thousand words.

As Daffy Duck infamously stuttered, That's All Folks!

In the last couple of days, I've upped my running distance, so up yours. That's a bit rude of me to say, but it is funny.

I have increased my distance, as I have my eye on an event in a couple of months. I may not get in, but I need to be sure my fitness is such that if I do, I don't die in the attempt. Since I've been in Coronado, I've found and kept to a general course when I run - it's a bit longer than five miles, and there is a pond that I've spoken of previously that I come across just past mile four. 

Of course, that stretch of the route is a Strava segment. I set a PR on it the first time I ran it, because (a) it was the first time running the segment, and (b) I didn't stop to see what I could see -- something I've done every time since that first trip. Since I am on a get-more-fit-fatso kick, I decided to push the segment and see if I could set a PR, then double back to the pond for a visit. I'd get a little more distance (which I'm looking for anyway), and get the segment without stopping. No-brainer.

I'm glad I did. I got to see an anhinga hunting and successfully catch and swallow a fish, a banded kingfisher dive and miss, and a caiman! Had I stopped in the middle of the segment, like I usually had previously, I likely would have missed all these. I think I'll make this my usual pattern now. It's an additional half K or so in distance, but that's just a bonus.

In a totally random occurrence, the distance led me to the name. 

​As for the PR? Yeah, nailed it.

About the only thing the following videos will kill are the people who choose to view them. As ever, choices come with consequences!

On the brighter, and more interesting side than listening to my horrific voice, in the middle of my walk a la tienda this morning, I stopped by a pond, hoping to see a caiman. I haven't seen one since my first visit. Alas, I didn't see one this time either, but I did see a female anhinga hunting and successfully capture a fish and eat it. That was cool. I also saw a purple gallinule. Pretty bird. Some others I've seen (and no photos of any) are osprey hunting over the ocean, kestrels stooping into the forest canopy in chase of prey, black and turkey vultures, and the yellow-headed caracara.

On the downer side, the fruit and veggie stand was closed. Dang. Guess that means I'll make the 4-mile round trip trek again tomorrow to get the fresh pineapple, and gargantuan avocado I'm craving. The walk is no biggie. It's not like I have a job or anything.

The combination of black and light sand makes for interesting patterns along the beach. Nice.

Another roller coaster day yesterday. The writing is going well enough, running was difficult, the fruit and oh-my-god avocados are amazeballs, but having to deal with a specific financial company in the good ol’ US of A definitely was the nadir.

The 1990s called, and said "If you would stop using our technology, yeah...that'd be great."

The company, that at the moment shall remain nameless but has two faces, requiring a fucking FAX is really something. If you’re a financial company, dealing with billions of dollars, I would think you would embrace the last, oh, I don’t know, 25 years of technology and not require people to FAX or snail-mail correspondence.

• Can I send a scanned document via email? “I’m sorry, what is this ‘scan’ you speak of?”
• How about using Verisign and a complete online capability? “Hahahaha! Are you kidding? Our tech team can’t convince us to leave our rotary phones behind! ‘Online Never’ is our motto!”

 
As a result, I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time tracking down a place where I can print, sign, and scan a document. There is a Mailboxes Etc. about two miles or so from here, that I have reliably heard can do this for me. If not, it’s a couple hour bus ride to The Big City, or try to find a local that has the hardware necessary. Regarding the fax part, my brother will take care of that in the states; he has a fax at his office. I can email the scan to him, he can then print and fax it for me.
 
I remember installing and maintaining software in the early 00s that would allow sending a fax from my computer. Our office abandoned it after about 10 years as being obsolete, since scan and email was the current tech, and many offices no longer even had fax machines. So these clowns are trying to claw me back 25 years. Now, I wouldn't mind that so much, if I could also reverse 25 years of aging to go along with it. No? Then fuck off. You can rest assured this will be my only business with you going forward.
 
I was considering heading back to the states in March, but, after sleeping on it, I think I can stick it out and keep to my original fly by the seat of my pants plan.

UPDATE:

It's 9:00 am on Friday the 4th. I've finished my run (a new PR on the route, TYVM), and have successfully printed, signed, scanned, and emailed the document so it can be faxed. I also scored awesome produce, including some stellar aguacate. So, yeah, now's the time to manifest my inner Hunter or Ernest, crack open a beer and generate some written imagery.