I pulled an all-nighter last night.
That’s just how work has been lately. I wasn’t on call, but I spent the last two days doing a telemedicine clinic that was so busy that I simply had no choice but to toil until nearly midnight completing the work. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends and burning out in the middle. I’ve needed a break.
So last night, when I finally got home I had to do the things I’ve put off and I pulled an all-nighter to complete my taxes and pack my bags. It goes without saying, then, that I fell asleep almost immediately after boarding my flight.
Along the way, as I gazed out from my seat somewhere in the air over the serpiginous swampy coastline of South Carolina and Georgoia, it’s the packing that had me worried the most. You see, I’m going on a trip that will allow for a minimum of extras. I worry that I’ve brought too much.
And I worry that I’ve forgotten something.
I made it, eventually to Nassau, Bahamas, and to the beginning of yet another dive trip. I usually only take one dive trip a year, but I didn’t take one last year, so on average the math still works. This is last year’s trip, which was cancelled because we decided to hold 2020 instead.
Once I got to my hotel, the need for sleep finally claimed its victory and I collapsed into the waiting bed until the shadows started to show themselves in the early evening and I ventured out. First I wandered toward downtown Nassau, only to find a hollow, desolate, skeleton of a city. She looks like an episode of Star Trek, in which the Enterprise discovers an abandoned planet. Without her cruise ships, Nassau is boarded up and empty. I am left wondering what it was like in the before-times.
After a dinner of fried conch I returned to the hotel to start to consider what will happen tomorrow. Around noon I’ll go to the dock to find the boat on which I’ll spend the next week, dedicating my time to scuba diving. These boats are called liveaboards, and on this one we will sail from place to place in the Exumas, dropping in and diving four or five times a day.
Many liveaboards are luxurious, but not this one. Instead it will be a no-frills cramped affair, but by all accounts, spectacular. I have seen it described as camping at sea
And I’ll be truly out of touch. Once we embark I will have absolutely no access to internet or email. There will be no texts or tweets. And there will be no in-baskets.
Unfortunately, however, there will also be no blog – at least not for a few days. I’ll still be writing on the boat, but I won’t be able to upload anything until we return to port.
So hello, my friends, and farewell (for a time, anyway). Welcome back to Butterblogger! The posts will start coming in a few days, and I’m expecting only the best.
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