Christmas is for...moving on
Happy Christmas. I thought I’d wait until after the holidays to post, but it’s my fucking blog, and I’ll do what I want. Today wasn’t much of anything other than a (mini) travel day from Nusa Lombongan to Nusa Penida.
Penida is a much bigger island, with proper hills and shit. My stay is not near the beaches, which means…well, I’m not sure what that means, other than I’m not near a beach.
I have fast internet, an attached decent restaurant, a shop down the street for coffee and Oreos, and a small swimming pool. Running will be interesting, as everything is either uphill or down, on very narrow, and rather highly used roads. I’ll give it a lookie see tomorrow early and determine if the number of scooters and/or cars is significantly lower at dawn, thereby decreasing my risk of death.
The biggest drawback to leaving Lombongan was saying goodbye to these fine folks.
The Townsends and I really hit it off, at least from my perspective. Who knows? Maybe they were just humoring me for a few days, and heaved a huge sigh of relief this morning, and thought, “Oh, thank goodness he’s finally out of our hair!”
They are from Sunshine Coast, and were there with their kids who reminded me a bit of my own at the same point in life. (Sunshine Coast is an interesting place name, and it makes me wonder just how many places have <adjective> Coast as a name where folks live? I can think of Gold, Ivory, Sunshine (natch), Rich (en Español), Azure (in French) off the top of my head. I’m sure there are many more.)
I’ll always remember the Bintang Radlers, black kitties, black dogs, ants vs. cockroach, heat stroke and how my Apple Watch totally flipped out when trying to read Jodie’s HR. Man, that looked weird!
Remember to always hydrate boys and girls. Dehydration can lead to heatstroke and weird-as-shit Apple Watch ECG readings. But, weird stuff can be fun — in the proper context. However, when the weird stuff is health related in a, shall we say, not particularly advanced health care situation, well, then it’s a lot less fun and a lot more worrying. But, everything ended well. All parties are healthy.
My departure was by a small boat, of which I was the only passenger. Kinda fun on the boat itself, but kinda sad that between the two of us aboard, we had a combined 30 teeth and no common language. Such are the hardships of a nomad, though, I suppose.
I’m not sure what I’ll do for the five days I’ve booked here. The price is right, though: $90 USD total, including brekkie each day. Maybe I’ll take the time to restart my writing, since there are few distractions nearby, and to get to a beach requires scooter driving — perhaps at a bit more than basic level. Maybe I will write, and then strap on a helmet and go after it? That sounds plausible. The published rate for renting one is $65K/day (about $6 USD), so it’s not like I’ll go broke, even if that’s the rate for the one that “sorry, we just rented that one, but we have this one for a bit more.”
First though, after pushing this dreck out, is a dip in the pool, before it rains again. The rainy season has finally decided to make an appearance, albeit mildly. It’s rained a few times since yesterday, but that hasn’t cooled it off at all. I’d say it made it more humid, but I don’t think that’s possible.