“I often worry that when I yearn for peace I’m actually whining for laziness. It’s a foolish thought cycle.” – Old Sean
Family Moments
Following my return to Dallas, Texas, I had a full few days free before being slung on my next journey, Myrtle Beach, North Carolina.
If my father’s side of the family has something akin to an ancestral gathering place, it’s likely the coast of North and South Carolina.
Since my grandparents used to live near North Myrtle Beach, we’ve attended this portion of the world yearly in my adolescents. My cousin picked my up from the airport, much to my gratitude, and I received the welcome nostalgic bludgeoning of feelings found while visiting one of the happiest places from my formative-year memories.
It was, for the first time in quite a while, I’d seen such a large contingent of my family gathered in one place. I’m usually abroad for these events, or I’ll do my visitations individually while passing through.
As things stood, we rented a beach house and spent days on the sandy shores, sometimes trekking through the narrow trails in the sand dunes. A concerning amount of my personal time was spent slurping down gelato, ice cream and shaved ice and further hours were spent catching up with family members.
We visited Calabash and browsed the seasonally inappropriate Christmas section and before I could count my days, everyone began their treks back home. My brother got me back to the airport, playing a cruel game of twenty questions with lots of amusement and no winners.
Last Moments Stateside
Before too long, I returned to Dallas for an exceptionally brief stay to handle another influx of Stateside paperwork. I joined another friend for a tour of the Dallas Botanical Gardens, attended a painting class, said goodbye to the last few members of my crowd, scrounged up a sinful number of pastries, ate more dumplings than the legal recommended amount, rode automatic longboards around White Rock, stumbled across an entire family of armadillos while catching up with a pilot friend of mine, visited my first movie theater in two years (Cruella), stumbled into the Illusion Museum of Downtown Dallas with yet another friend before finally taking a full day off.
I roped another couple of my friends (Tom and Val) to Crater of Diamond State Park located in Arkansas, where we sifted dry dirt, washed out stone after stone and broke apart dirt clods with a certain amount of Zen concentration.
We didn’t find any diamonds, but we did dig up a lot of other interesting materials, such as sharp flakes of jasper, small sparkles of calcite, the almost illusionary veneer of mica and dozens of other unique rock formations, all of which were pocketed in a brown bag. We religiously ate Bugles on the drive home.
Further Abound
This would be, as things turn out, my last trip in the United States. On July 7th of 2021 my restless blood hit my with a vengeance and I flung myself out of the United States towards Costa Rica.
Despite my blood telling me to get a move on, my mind was still fudge-slow about setting off on a new journey. But realistically, I’ve been in the US for nearly four months on my friend Sage’s generosity. The issue with the States is while I do a lot, I’m usually not very goal oriented.
Something in the US lets me slide my guard down and get comfortable. I have trouble shaking the vacation mentality when I’m in the US, because I can respond to the culture there so instinctively. There’s no subtext culture to understand, no foreign language to decode.
In short, outside of the rather rigorous US workplace culture, the United States tends to make me reactive and somewhat slugging. Going back abroad forced me to jerk awake and get back into survival and thrive mode.
Post COVID Travel
Now, travel, despite what many people believe, hasn’t changed radically since the pandemic. There are extra costs in transit and I usually have to spend more time than normal planning, since a lot of things are closed because of the pandemic, meaning that written articles from two years ago are essentially useless.
A much larger amount of my planning time is spent talking to people on the ground with my broken Spanish to sort things out. Surprisingly, Costa Rica is slightly horrible for this because there isn’t a centralized database for travel information.
Unlike other countries where government offices have a standardizing hand in organizing times and routes for trains, buses and perhaps even rental car services, almost everything in Costa Rica is organized and done by individual companies without much input on English websites. Meaning using a VPN to connect to Costa Rican web sources and really exercising what Spanish I have is a prominent part of my day.
However, things are sorted enough for my arrival. I’ll be landing in San José, which I’ll use as a mini-base while exploring the countryside.
It’s good to be in travel mode again.
Best regards and excellent trails,
Old Sean
Written July 2nd 2021
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The GoPro Hero Black is my go to Action camera. I’m not comfortable bringing my cell phone to many wet and rugged locations, so the GoPro does most of my photographic heavy-lifting. The only things I bring in my GoPro kit are the camera, a spare battery and the forehead mount. I upgrade my GoPro once every two years. It was particularly excellent to have during my aquatic tour of Belize.
