Ride And Abide

Today I blog to Radiohead...  Everything In It's Right Place Yesterday was interesting.  I met a guy who opened a Coffee Roasting Business after losing interest in the rat race near San Diego while living there with his wife and child.  I believe he still exploits his US connection for income (consulting of some sort) but has now lived in Tamarindo, CR for 2 years now and as he put it "[he] doesn't see returning to the states any time soon". When in Rome... A post shared by James Radtke (@rideandabide) on Jan 22, 2018 at 2:34pm PST I then met some folks at dinner.  Interestingly they engaged *me* in conversation, as I have been pretty low-key this trip.  Somehow the topic got fairly deep and the patriarch of the wacky pair kind of called out my situation fairly accurately... "just got out of a long relationship... wasn't married though...  and everyone told him to take this trip to find himself".  So... nobody told me to take this...

Listening to a favorite tune while I am blogging this morning. Film School - Two Kinds Muy Cansado despues surfear una hora - Very tired from surfing for an hour (my Spanish still sucks, even after 2 days). It turns out surfing is like riding a bike.  Albeit, I was riding the equivalent of a tandem, by myself and the waves were analogous of a flat parking lot.  But... First set, first wave... Up. I really need to get my life figured out.  Destressing myself out of my normal routine is almost painful and uncomfortable.  And as I consider this, I am unable to rationalize why Americans live the stressful and overwhelming way we do.  To be clear, there are some folks here that also chase the same dream (nice cars and the idea of presenting an image.)  There is just so much life to experience and we seem to fret over the dumbest shit.  While it might seem ironic that I am documenting/complaining about the exact thing I seem to be doing - and tha...

I had visited Santiago, Chile in 2000 for work... and that trip solidified my feeling that I had a "thing" for the countries south of the US border.  Trips to Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Ensenada... all left me with fond memories and very deep emotions about the place. This trip to Costa Rica so far has been over-the-top amazing.  The people have all been so nice and friendly and accommodating.  The landscape is unimaginably beautiful.  I really had no idea.  And the food... they seem to have a flair for making amazing dishes here. So far I have not done anything particularly exciting... unless you count getting lost because there are no street addresses here and GPS does not work on "guesses" ;-) Saturday - drove to a Walmart to get sunscreen and Off (I had forgotten about the whole "Zika" thing).  That was a cool experience.  Some folks spoke English fairly well.  Other folks.. not so much (no mucho).  My trivial amount of Spanish see...