Day 2: Biomass

I don’t know if we’re still jet lagged or just lazy but we did not do a whole hell of a lot today. I took this picture at 13:30 like, oh lol we’re getting a bit of a late start.

We would not leave the hotel for another 7 hours. That’s not to say we didn’t do anything. We just didn’t do much. I can’t say I’m terribly upset. It makes my job here a lot easier and I have a natural inclination towards sloth so I’d say the only real problem with what we did today comes from society and the idea that if you’re not doing things ALL THE TIME you’re basically a loser. Especially when you’re on vacation in a foreign city – oh man if you’re not exhausted at the end of your vacation did you even take one? Well we’re in the place where they invented society so what better time to spit in its face. I will say I did not get a ton of photographs today but I’ll try to break up the text with dialogue or something.

Started out at breakfast again. Didn’t get down there until late though, theme already developing. We did the Friday crossword. Everything was going smoothly until a little girl put a 3D bread item in the automatic belt-fed toaster and it got jammed in the back. Smoke began to drift out of the top and her mom called for help. The first responder was a heavyset man who did his job with enthusiasm, using tongs to beat back the smoke and free the croissant thereby saving the schedules of everyone who’d hoped to have toast that morning. I had some eggs and grapefruit.

Back in the room we did some good things for ourselves. Joe has put us on an exercise regimen consisting of four sets of 20 push ups and four sets of 25 sit ups. We polished those off and booked our next move. That’s right. Things are happening. Tomorrow we board a ferry at noon for Milos where we will spend two nights. Neither one of us is 100% sure how we decided to go there but there we will go. It’s got a bunch of beaches and caves and an all white moon beach and may or may not have been named Europe’s best island for 2019.

Plans booked, we started talking about moving our laying around up to the pool, but we were already about halfway into Splash, which Joe had never seen, so we decided to finish it. Tom Hanks doesn’t get a fishtail? He just has to live as a human in mermaid society? Isn’t that going to make him a disabled merman? I guess that’s the price you pay for Daryl Hannah who we learned is now married to Neil Young. Cool couple.

We finally dragged our asses up to the pool where we met Joe’s friends from day 1. I don’t know if I mentioned this earlier but Joe had made a couple of friends on the first day while waiting for me to get here, Americans in the CBD business here to meet with large scale growers or something. Joe had one of their business cards and we were supposed to text them the previous night but that never happened. No worries, bro, these dudes were reeeaaaal cool. They were sitting with one Canadian and two Estonian guys, one of whom had a full back tattoo that he definitely got in prison. Everyone was super nice and introduced themselves around and we chatted for a bit about their trip before we took up residence in a couple of deck chairs and minded our own business. I could have stood around talking about biomass for hours but Joe wanted to get some reading done. They bought us a couple of beers. I set mine down between our chairs. Joe drank his quickly and then started on mine.

“Which one of them is named Brody?” I asked

“Neither one”

“That’s impossible. One of them has to be named Brody.”

We tried to read but it was very windy, again. Joe is starting to find my wind hatred funny which only gives me one more reason to hate it. Our friends continued to do beers and tequila shots. They handed us two more. Joe adjusted his plan. For the first round he drank the first beer quickly and then drank the second beer just as quickly so that it would seem like the right amount of time for two people to finish two beers when in fact it had only been one person. This time, to more effectively sell the lie, he would take turns between beers, gradually depleting both of them so that, should anyone check, it would look like two totally normal people totally normally drinking two beers. It was a perfect plan, the Brodys would never know. The only person who wasn’t fooled was Joe who had just pretty rapidly consumed four beers. There was no lying about that, but he was doing it for a good cause. So I wouldn’t have to have the perpetually weird conversation with this group of business partiers about how I don’t drink. What a guy. The tequila shot he did for himself.

The Estonians got up and jumped in the pool, urging us to do the same. The water was freezing cold but we did it. Another one of the group attempted to stay dry but they tipped up his chair and dumped him in the pool. Glad we did it under our own power. Passed that test at least.

We were standing around talking to one of the Brodys, the one who got dumped in the pool, and I told him I was glad he didn’t get hurt getting dumped in the pool. “dude,” he told me, “I’m always getting hurt on these trips. I got stabbed in Ecuador.” He gestured at his right knee which had a large scar to the side of the kneecap.

“You got stabbed? That’s insane, what happened?”

“We were out at some bar down there and it was all you can drink, six dollars for guys, three dollars for girls. So we order a bucket of beers and we tip the waitress five bucks, so like, double our entry fee already, right? So then she comes back and we order some more drinks and we tip her a twenty and she’s like ‘alright, I’m only serving you guys from now on’ and she was like, ‘you ordered all these beers, you get up on the bar and serve them’ so I stand up on the bar and I’m handing out these drinks and I think it was just like, jealousy, you know? This guy, he saw all the girls like, coming over to us and he picked up a beer bottle and threw it and it hit me right here and shattered and the glass just went right in. But it’s kind of good, the bartender said that because I’d been standing there, the glass just went, like, right around her face and completely missed her.”

Ohhhhhhh Kay. I am glad that your knee heroically put itself in the path of that bottle and saved the poor service worker, but where the hell do you get off trying to call that “getting stabbed?” I mean are you fucking joking? Do you know what getting stabbed is? Get out of here, Brody. The rest of his story consisted of, in no particular order, sleeping with knives, getting stitches with no anesthetic, swimming with hammerhead sharks, and a doctor being amazed by his immune system. That was all we could take of the pool deck. As we were leaving, the Estonian had lifted another one of the group and was carrying him towards the pool like a babe to a baptism. Hope everyone is alright.

We got back to the room around 5 and decided to shower and head out and get something to eat. Joe put on a show about the Gabelein Mummies. I showered and then laid down and waited for Joe to get up and shower. “These mummies are interesting!” Joe remarked from his own bed. The next thing we knew it was 8 o’clock.

We got up starving and thirsty and started blaming each other for sleeping on the watch.

“I should have showered first,” Joe offered, “that would have made the difference.”

“What difference?”

“I would have been asleep already when you got out of the shower.”

We dragged ourself outside and walked towards the waterfront. It was almost two miles away but we made ourselves walk in penance for our grievous listlessness.

We found a cool park that had been built pretty recently. There was a huge lawn were people were watching a movie. The movie was Big Hero 6.

We tried to go to this crowded seafood restaurant but were told we needed reservations so we settled on a Gyro shop. It was very tasty. We ordered a gyro each and a plate of fries. Then we noticed that the gyros were only 2.50 each and got worried we didn’t order enough so we added a spicy cheese sauce, a greek salad, and fried feta in pie crust with sesame and honey. We were full after the gyros.

We walked back along a nice wide street. It said it would take us 48 minutes but I bet we did it in 30. We walk pretty fast.

We’re back at the hotel. It’s late and we’re not tired. We actually went down to the bowling alley that’s next to our hotel and rolled a couple of games but it was half hearted. Time to wrap this day up but it’s lingering. There’s something it wants us to see before it releases us. It’s the 2012 romantic comedy Stuck in Love starring Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Connelly.