Gregory Chronicles

October 16, 2019

This morning I awoke to the chattering of birds and pulsing of tides coming in and gradually increasing growling of the ubiquitous motorbikes, the mainstay of travel here in Bali. It is something to behold, the bobbing and weaving dance like zooming in and out, around each other and cars and trucks, inches often separating them from collision! Sort of like watching bees coming and going around a hive, each jostling for their position, somehow sensitive to the others movements. I’ve had that experience doing formation flying with friends in our high performance aerobatic home built planes, where there’s just a few feet separating us with air currents bouncing us about but with concentration and feeling we manage to sense and anticipate each other and avoid collision. Sometimes it doesn’t quite go as anticipated and I’m told there are quite a few accidents here from scrapes and bruises to death. Recently, a German friend of David’s sadly died in a motorcycle accident and several other friends have had rather life altering accidents as well. I was contemplating renting a scooter before coming, against the protestations of my lovely wife and in my sometimes usual fashion thinking, oh, accident not gonna happen to me - needless to say, immediately after my arrival and witnessing the intensity of the traffic here which is unlike any I have seen elsewhere in the world - not ME BABY!! I could very well be run over on the narrow streets however, so I’m ever vigilant and expect to make it out alive 🙏.

I digress......after waking up to mostly pleasant sounds, I went below to the patio of Amed Cafe and met up with David so we could stream live the Democratic Debate on CNN - not so pleasant sounds but doing our civic participatory duty to be informed. We watched a good deal of it but gave up after a repetitious while, maybe clearer on who might be a good candidate to get the country back on track, or not 🤷‍♂️. Can’t say I’m totally out of reach of the current news but at least the relentless yammering of the pundits is much less but not the continuation of the disastrous on going dysfunctional political leadership apparently....who could have predicted it he says sarcastically!

We did have a wonderful breakfast buffet that goes with our stay everyday, an interesting combination of Indonesian fare with some traditional western food like omelets and pancakes. Lots of yummy fresh fruit such as mango, pineapple, papaya and other exotica along with spicy noodles, mixed vegetables, various doughy finger foods. That calmed our nerves as we watched the debate bantering on our computers with earpieces so as not to disturb the other gradually arriving guests.

Afterwards we went snorkeling - I know, it’s been a tough morning but we carry on 😎. David has these full face snorkeling masks that are really great, good visibility and easy breathing, no worries. We trolled up and down the reef, lots of tiny iridescent blue fish, variety of many other tropical species of mostly small to medium size and really unique blue starfish everywhere along with anemones and other plant like creatures in all kinds of shapes. The water is very clear and warm so you could stay in a long time, no worries.

Yesterday, when we got settled, we met a friendly Italian chap who has a business where he is hired as a consultant by various hotels around the world, comes in, stays a while and gives them advice on how to improve their guests experiences, upgrade their services and how to advertise for better traffic. He was very nice to vacate the room he was in for me so I wouldn’t have to climb too many stairs and take out my knees completely - quite considerate and much appreciated! We’ve since chatted him up a number of times, quite delightful and affable. He met us as we came out of the water a bit ago and was excited since he just returned from a 4am deep sea fishing trip and caught two Mahi Mahi Tuna, his first fishing trip. Right away he wanted us to join him tonight for a fresh caught fish dinner on the patio, prepared by the staff here. - how could we refuse.....I’ll let you know how it was with an update later.

Here’s a few pictures of my pad.

Ciao

Room with a view.....

If you look closely you can see the rising slope of Mt. Agung, the big volcanoes that went off a couple years causing people to evacuate and dumped a lot of ash.