The Highlands, Scotland

This one is a really cool one. I need a moment of inspiration to write it. Stay tuned.

The Inn, Scotland

I sprained my ankle on the racetrack and rested at an inn for a few days. There is a story here, I just haven’t written it yet.

Everything you imagine about a run-of-the-mill Scottish Inn is true.

The United Kingdom

At the time of my decision to take a motorcycle tour through Europe, I was in the early phases of founding one of the biggest operations I had ever attempted: a global network of engineers and agencies to be able to manage any technical project put in front of us. It was going very well and I had made some good hires. It was around my time in the Highlands that I realized if I continued to go deeper I would compromise the company, and in earnest I was quite physically exhausted by this point. So I did what exactly what nobody touring the UK on motorcycle would do: I rode full speed - 1 (about 95mph / 150kph), because 96mph was the speed at which was the speed at which the bike would start to shake a little, for 7 hours straight on the highway without visiting a single sight, listening to and singing to “A Whole New World” the entire time, since singing at the top of your lungs while wearing a motorcycle helmet going nearly 100mph on a highway you don’t really have to worry about anyone hearing you. Now I sing this song really well. I do both parts.

Of course there is a limit to how long one can ride a motorcycle at full speed because eventually pure fatigue will take over you, so I happened to get just close enough to Cambridge to make it there for the night. It was exceptionally beautiful, and did not miss any expectation I had of the city. I was tired but still got to see that famous learning institution that some of the greatest minds spent years in saving the world.

The next morning, I continue straight to Dover, where the ferry to France was. I did not see Edinburgh. I didn’t see Glasgow. I believe I stopped in Manchester for socks. I did not visit Liverpool or Nottingham or Birmingham, I did not set foot in Wales, and I rode straight through London without a glimpse of the city.

The Ocean

On the ferry to France, there were only two motorcyclists, including myself, so naturally we spent the whole ride chatting. It turns out that he was a retired traffic officer. It came to mind that I didn’t have insurance for my trip so I casually asked him if he ever pulled someone over without insurance, he said many times, I asked him what would happen, he said they would seize the vehicle and the driver would go to court. I laughed a bit, waited until I wasn’t in front of him to do that.

France

You’re probably expecting a long story.

I didn’t really visit France. I more used the roads at the north to quickly cross into Belgium. Paris was three hours away. I decided this was too far. I did stop for coffee in a proper café where no one spoke English, and somewhere in the evening I got a really gross hamburger.

Fez or Rabat, Morocco

Naturally I can’t find record of the booking. To say the least, before this night, I did not believe in haunted palaces, and the next day I began and have continued to hold my belief in haunted palaces.

It was four of us. Myself, a girl I was beginning a relationship with, my close friend, and his girlfriend. We booked the place at the last minute. The price was suspicioiusly low. When we arrived, we were greeted by a butler and shown around the property, and dispelling any doubt, we had indeed booked a palace that was clearly the residence of some ruling fmaily of Morocco, many years ago.

I will tell the tale of how I came to believe in haunted palaces, but you won’t believe in them until you experience it for yourself.

We gave my friend and his girlfriend the throne room (as often, it looked like out of a movie), and myself and the girl I was with took the servants quarter next door. During the night she woke up precisely three times in shock. I could sense it, so I would wake up and ask her what happened. She told me she had just had a terrible nightmare. On the third time, she pleaded with me to switch places with her in bed. I laughed. This was ridiculous, as if a position in the bed would make a difference. I had been sleeping soundly on my side so I happily switched sides with her. I proceeded to have precisely three horrifying nightmares, after the third of which I woke up in sleep paralysis and saw what I can only describe as a dementor-like creature hovering so close to me that it was almost touching me. It was aimed at my heart. The paralysis lasted around 45 seconds, during which I did everything in my power to hold onto my spirit, which I somehow felt it was after. Once I could move, I made a “poof” sound at it as if to say get the fuck away from me and it was gone.

The next morning, we shared stories. My friend had a nightmare the entire night that he had witnessed a murder and was being hunted by the murderer. His girlfriend didn’t sleep. She didn’t tell us why, or what she experienced during her sleepless night.

This alone did not convince me that the palace was haunted (though I considered it). What convinced me is when we went to get gas later that afternoon and I received a call from my mother, on the opposite side of the world, who was clearly worried. She asked me two questions. Where was I, and was I ok? I answered her questions and then asked her why she had, that day, of all days felt compelled to call and ask, and she told me it was because she had had a dream the night before that I had died. My mother has a sixth sense. This is something I’ve known since I was a child. So there are haunted palaces around.

New York City, New York, Unite States, February, 2020

The next year, while in New York City, I had the nail of my big toe growing into the skin. I think I had been out dancing a lot on it. After a few days it was clearly and undeniably infected. Everyone who saw it freaked out and told me to go to a doctor immediately and get antibiotics (this is the American way). I don’t take antibiotics. This is how I maintain one of the strongest immune systems in the world. I had between five and ten close friends and family insist I take antibiotics, but I knew better. I had lived with a damn good Podiatrist for nearly a month. I saw how he handled things.

I gave Mark a ring, explained the situation, and asked his advice. I remember when I told him that everyone was insisting that I take antibiotics he called them a bunch of “sissies” and said to definitely not bother with antibiotics for something so minor. He then proceeded to tell me how to perform home surgery on it (which, if you remember, he was quite experienced with). This required a set of medical tools that I naturally didn’t have but as I had happened to make a short trip to New Jersey to visit my dog who I had adopted out when I began traveling to one of my best friend’s families, her father for some unknown reason had everything Mark listed.

So, I sanitized an area of my room and proceeded to do a self operation for about one hour. It was extremely painful but also extremely rewarding because Mark, the expert that he was, told me that after I did the operation he described the infection would go away naturally in 2-3 days. And it did. My body fought it off. For those of you who didn’t know, this is how the body works.

Athens Greece -> San Salvador, El Salvador

Once, recently, a friend who is understatedly one part sage, one part earthly and spiritual database, one part brotherly love, and many more parts, recognized that I was in something of dire straits and needed to be “evacuated” from my location at the time, Athens, Greece, to my present location, San Salvador, El Salvador, for a recovery process I absolutely did not want to begin and spent days trying to find my way around. I had announced many times that the 29 hour two stop flight, in combination with my present state of mind, brought about around the most fear I have ever experienced traveling.

How was the flight in comparison to the pure dread I was imagining it to be? It was pure dread, cyclically, for what felt like days. I was in and out of sleep. Half of the time I barely remember knowing anything other than what step was next and how long was left.

A two stop flight is not two parts. You have to first dread going to the airport, then you have to go to the airport, then you wait to check in, security, wait for your gate, wait at the gate, board the plane, wait to take off, actually fly, land and wait to deboard, then, if you’re as lucky as I was, have an entire 9 hours to wait at possibly my least favorite airport in the world, where I slept in many cavernous corners on piles of clothing in the middle of the day constantly waking up with pains in my body.

Then you have to pray you don’t miss your connection, find your next gate, wash and repeat the above process, and then…wait again, in my case, four hours in Panama, which somehow I actually don’t even remember, and then do it again and then have really good friends come pick you up from the airport and then drive an hour in a taxi to a hotel to sleep for one night. And then another hour the next day to move hotels.

The kicker on all this: a few weeks before the trip, I had been at a penthouse party in Milan and met a lovely native El Salvadorian, who happened to be moving back that week, so I said, ‘My friend is also moving there this week, let me call him, he always answers’, and he did, they became aquainted and connected in person shortly after. I met her through another guy at the party, Carlo, who was that one guy during the night where you feel like you are meant to be at the party to meet this one person.

It just so happened that the night I was intending to fly, Carlo had just returned from the Greek islands and was in Athens, so we had met up for drinks, at which point my phone went screen dead, black, literally in the dark. It was around 11pm and the flight was scheduled for around 3am, four hours from then. I wasn’t even sure if it was booked yet. I managed to get in contact with my friend only because the guy I was out to drinks with happened to be the one connected to our now mutual contact on the ground. Otherwise, I was in the dark with my phone.

I got in touch with my friend. I explained the situation to him, which had the added element of the internet at my home not working and my having neither enough money nor any means to get access to a taxi to take me to the airport since public transportation was no longer an option, and I lightly suggested that maybe we should put the flight off to the next day, but also that he was the one in the clearer state of mind and that I would leave the decision up to him. A few minutes later, he wrote back, flight was booked.