4/12/15, “A Time to Say Goodbye”
Grantley Adams International Airport, Barbados (BGI)
Well, my travels in the Lesser Antilles have come to an end, and now
it is time to say goodbye. There is a
familiar sinking feeling that accompanies each trip, one before I embark on the
voyage, worrying about everything that can go wrong, and this one, when it’s
time to say goodbye, at the end of the trip.
When I get back to work on Monday, I will make a rational evaluation of
this trip, how wonderful it was, where it ranks in my overall list, but, for
now, it is merely time to say goodbye, and I cannot but think about how much I
will miss it here. My next trip to the
Caribbean will bring me to Jose Marti International Airport, which is in Cuba. That trip will be epic, but I still do not
see how the Greater Antilles can be greater than the Lesser Antilles. Then there will be Hispanolia to say
“Caribbean Complete.” After that, all
that remains is the Bahamas to say, “West Indies Complete.”
Those are future trips. Now, it is time to say goodbye to Barbados,
to the Lesser Antilles. Here at Grantley
Adams, the eighth and final such airport in the Lesser Antilles, each of which
has earned their own airport entry, I should feel triumphant. I pulled off the trip perfectly, yet I just
feel empty and depressed. Is it the
other stuff in my life? The usual doubts
returning? Or is it the fact that I will
likely never again return to these so-called Lesser Antilles, or at least not
for a decade. I had trouble sleeping in,
and I heard my neighbors making preparations to go to the beach. I wanted to say goodbye to them, but I wanted
more to get an extra hour of sleep. In
the end, I got neither, and they were gone by the time I went to
breakfast.
I worked on publishing last
night’s entry while I ate, but I didn’t have much of an appetite, the empty
feeling already returning. Again, they
tried too hard, some kind of breakfast pizza.
After I finished, I went back to my room, where I lit up my last Winston
Churchill and published my entry. I went
outside, enjoying the view from my porch one last time, and that was when the
empty feeling came in full force. I did
not want to leave. I didn’t want to stay
here. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t know what I wanted, and that doesn’t
make for a good song. I packed as I
finished my cigar and then took a quick shower.
On the way to the airport, I lit up my Partagas, and I was told I
couldn’t smoke in the car, a first, so I kept the cigar out the window. We stopped to take ceremonial pictures at the
Garrison and the beach.
That was it,
time to say goodbye. He dropped me off
at the airport, where I found a bench, relit the Partagas, and proceeded to write
this entry. I have to check in soon, but
I can write until the cigar is done.
Hopefully by the time I get to my cool apartment in New York, everything
will be back to normal. For now, I just
want to enjoy my last cigar, as it is time to say goodbye. This trip has been different from my usual
trips in so many ways. First, the pace
of it has been different. Second, I will
honestly be able to answer that I have met interesting people, whether it was
the waitress in Grenada, the manager in Saint Vincent, my neighbors in
Barbados, or P--- and her husband. I
will remember all of them as long as I remember this trip. Will this be the new way that I travel? I think not, but I will make more of an
effort to interact with people as I travel.
On that note, I close. It is time
to say goodbye.
En route, NYC Taxi 4G57
Well, here I am, back to the familiar, taking a taxi from Kennedy, as
I have so often done before. The sun was
setting as we landed in Kennedy, and now the sun has set on my time in the
sun. My coworker was, of course, right
that I spent most of my waking hours smoking cigars in the shade. In fact, I only went to the beach to take a
ceremonial picture in my suit with my cigar.
The only water I felt the whole trip was from the rain, and I did not
feel the touch of sand. Yes, reader, I
spent a week in the Caribbean, and I did not go to the beach. I avoided the sun as much as possible, and I
stayed away from the tourist hotspots. I
had the time of my life.
I am making my
way back home, and I will try to watch Game of Thrones, once again returning to
the familiar. I will be going to
Brooklyn to visit my old friend on Wednesday, another return to the
familiar. I got far more work done in
the 26 hours I worked remotely than I could have at the office, and I somehow
managed to catch up with a large backlog of work, which allows me to return
tomorrow with a fresh start. I usually
take this time to summarize and reflect, but I have already done a lot of
reflecting.
I have spent enough time writing
about the magic of the Lesser Antilles, and I have nothing left to say other
than, “Reader, get on a plane and go there.”
Spend at least one full day exploring the city, experiencing the local
culture, rather than going to the beach.
If you do, you will never think of the Caribbean as merely a place to go
to the beach. Other than the day of the
MIA-GND flight, each day’s entry has had the title of a song. The non-travel days (where I woke up and went
to sleep in the same country) had titles of songs from “Beauty and the Beast.” I chose “Belle,” “Gaston,” “Be Our Guest,” “Something
There,” and “Tale as Old as Time,” the last one since I had already used the
proper title of the song as the overview for the Day 0 entry. Each of those five entries had a thematic
analysis of the song, as it related to the movie, to the trip, and to my
life. If you have missed any of those
entries, I encourage you to go back to read them.
As for the travel days. I started to get clever, since I decided I
could use any song title. The titles
were “Memories” as I left Grenada, “Journey to the Past” as I headed to
Barbados, and “Time to Say Goodbye” for this entry to close out the trip. It is 2015, and I will be going to Cuba this
summer. I suppose that I should save Hispaniola
for 2016 and the Bahamas for 2017, but those are what I call “flex trips.” Bahamas could literally be done any unplanned
weekend between now and the end of August.
Hispaniola would need a three-day weekend to be done together, or I
could do it as two separate weekend trips.
I am planning to go to Costa Rica in October. That’s it.
Those are the only countries I have left in the continent.
What else will that leave me? Lots of stuff left to do in the US, Canada,
and Mexico, plenty of Olympic Stadiums, and various Wonders of the World. I have been embarking on my mission for
almost three years now, and I am in the home stretch. On paper, I am 63%, possibly even more. I need to double check my list to make sure
it is properly updated. However, it was
not until I said “Lesser Antilles Complete” that I realized just how much
progress I had made. In three months’
time, I will say, “Mainland US Complete,” and I just realized that I wanted to
save the last of my Partagas from the box for that occasion.
We are entering Manhattan now, so I will wrap
up. After I closed, I headed in, lost a
couple of my lighters to securities, the souvenir ones, not the good ones, and
uploaded my photos at the gate. I got
on, and it was a long and boring flight.
I spent most of it playing my game, but I got bored of that, so then I
listened to some comedy on SiriusXM. I
snacked a bit, that being the only food other than breakfast I have eaten all
day.
When we landed, I realized that it
was a new terminal for me. The Global
Entry machines had an issue, but it all worked it in the end, and my bag was
already making its way around. I had no
problem with Customs, and I was in a taxi by 8 PM, only 40 minutes after we
landed. I then proceeded to write this
entry, which I will now close, along with the trip. It’s been a great one. Next stop: Chicago (or the outskirts) for the
pipe show, which I might actually cancel.
Otherwise, Sweden.
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