Friendly Strangers
Had dinner and drinks with Garth - my high school friend who lives here on the island and works as a dive master - last night and played “remember when...??” What's funny about getting together with someone you knew a long time ago in a very different place is that each of you vividly remember different things, sometimes about the same event. I discovered this when my family met up again in Guatemala after 20 years and pieced together a lot of events by someone remembering one thing and others remember the rest of the stuff and a lot of “I can't believe you don't remember...!!! You were right there! In fact, you said...!!! How do you not remember that?”
And really, that game can be played ad infinitum. Four years of high school is a lot of material to remember. Eventually we went to a rotisserie chicken place down the street for dinner and had to wait for a table. Then the first open one was usurped by an older couple that arrived after us. But in true island fashion, you just look at each other and shrug and order a beer and prepare to wait for the next table.
However, this couple saw us looking around and decided to offer us the two empty chairs at their 4 top so we accepted and had dinner with them. Shirley and Grant are sailors and divers who sail their boat up and down the north and south American coastlines for 6 months of the year and spend time at their house in northern California – or traveling around the US in their RV – for the other 6 months. They exchanged island stories with Garth and we all talked about south east Asia and south America.
Roatan is a popular place for sailors and Garth says that occasionally a boat will dock in Roatan and be looking for crew. They offer an all expenses paid trip where ever the boat is going – around the world, sometimes – in exchange for your labor on the boat. I know I live a level of gypsy life but sailing around the world is a whole other level of gypsy -hood. One in which I can see the appeal but I can't really conceive of living all those months on something as small as a boat. It's like touring but never getting off the bus.
They were great dinner company and the island being as small as it is, I expect to run into them again. Garth suggested a place for breakfast this morning called “Cream of the Trop” so i showed up there this morning. Cute little gelato place painted in really bright colors and staffed by one busy woman running about serving 10 people breakfast simultaneously. Some of her customers – despite the fact that they can see she's the only person there – seemed impatient and again I just wanted to ask what kind of schedule they are on here on the island that they can't wait another 5 minutes for their coffee. Once they left, I fell into a conversation with Serena – the owner, manager, cook, gelato maker – about that kind of weird impatience and she and I hit it off immediately.
She's an expat who runs her own IT business remotely from the island and just recently opened up the gelato store. She said she's had about 4 consecutive hours off in the past 3 months since the store opened. I told her it sounded like tour :) Then Greg, the expat owner of the local sports bar down the street, stopped in for breakfast and we all chatted about life on the island while she made his breakfast and her own and then sat down and hung out with us for awhile.
Apparently their morning tradition is to have breakfast together and then play video games in the store while she gets up and down serving customers and taking her turn at Guitar Hero and Virtual Fighter. I played Guitar Hero with them and did quite badly playing cool songs by Foghat and Heart and had a great morning just drinking coffee and hanging out.
I'm gonna go diving this afternoon and see how that goes. Looking forward to getting in the water... Pictures later.
And really, that game can be played ad infinitum. Four years of high school is a lot of material to remember. Eventually we went to a rotisserie chicken place down the street for dinner and had to wait for a table. Then the first open one was usurped by an older couple that arrived after us. But in true island fashion, you just look at each other and shrug and order a beer and prepare to wait for the next table.
However, this couple saw us looking around and decided to offer us the two empty chairs at their 4 top so we accepted and had dinner with them. Shirley and Grant are sailors and divers who sail their boat up and down the north and south American coastlines for 6 months of the year and spend time at their house in northern California – or traveling around the US in their RV – for the other 6 months. They exchanged island stories with Garth and we all talked about south east Asia and south America.
Roatan is a popular place for sailors and Garth says that occasionally a boat will dock in Roatan and be looking for crew. They offer an all expenses paid trip where ever the boat is going – around the world, sometimes – in exchange for your labor on the boat. I know I live a level of gypsy life but sailing around the world is a whole other level of gypsy -hood. One in which I can see the appeal but I can't really conceive of living all those months on something as small as a boat. It's like touring but never getting off the bus.
They were great dinner company and the island being as small as it is, I expect to run into them again. Garth suggested a place for breakfast this morning called “Cream of the Trop” so i showed up there this morning. Cute little gelato place painted in really bright colors and staffed by one busy woman running about serving 10 people breakfast simultaneously. Some of her customers – despite the fact that they can see she's the only person there – seemed impatient and again I just wanted to ask what kind of schedule they are on here on the island that they can't wait another 5 minutes for their coffee. Once they left, I fell into a conversation with Serena – the owner, manager, cook, gelato maker – about that kind of weird impatience and she and I hit it off immediately.
She's an expat who runs her own IT business remotely from the island and just recently opened up the gelato store. She said she's had about 4 consecutive hours off in the past 3 months since the store opened. I told her it sounded like tour :) Then Greg, the expat owner of the local sports bar down the street, stopped in for breakfast and we all chatted about life on the island while she made his breakfast and her own and then sat down and hung out with us for awhile.
Apparently their morning tradition is to have breakfast together and then play video games in the store while she gets up and down serving customers and taking her turn at Guitar Hero and Virtual Fighter. I played Guitar Hero with them and did quite badly playing cool songs by Foghat and Heart and had a great morning just drinking coffee and hanging out.
I'm gonna go diving this afternoon and see how that goes. Looking forward to getting in the water... Pictures later.
posted by KBARRETT at 3:54 PM
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