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| Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, March 2015 |
If you asked me a year ago where Spring Break 2015 would take me, I doubt I would've come up with anything exotic. If I've learned anything about life though, it's that mine is defined by its beautiful unpredictability. (To put things into perspective, I write this a few feet from the Bering Sea watching a bunch of Aleut kids engaged in serious nerf gun warfare.)
It was a string of remarkable events that led to my sojourn to Borneo this month. Subsequent posts will elucidate the island's wonders and our shenanigans (and hopefully tantalize you to the point of letting me guide you and your friends there next fall!). This post, however, will serve as a primer, setting the stage and introducing the key players of the next chapters.
It was a long night in the midst of a long winter; Katie (one of my nearest and dearest travel and mischief partners) had come over to my house for dinner and drinks. (My aptitude for cooking and her aptitude for eating are quite compatible.) While I cooked pasta and white sauce, Katie mixed tequila and grapefruit juice.
I feel that tequila is probably behind the, uhh, conception of many things, some of them less-benign than spontaneous spring break travel. After some serious work on the bottle, our own creative juices began to flow.
"Al, I'm so tired of being cold."
"Me too! Let's go somewhere warm for spring break."
"We totally should! Where do you want to go?"
"I miss Asia. What about Borneo?"
"Let's go to BORNEO!"
Borneo is a locale ever-intriguing. It's portrayed as a jungle-carpeted region overflowing with unique flora and fauna, alluring to anyone desiring eco-adventure. When I lived in Palawan, I was not far from the ferry to Borneo. My employers quickly squelched that dream though; the Sulu Sea has pirates and they were concerned I might classify as desirable cargo. When I returned to the States though, I didn't give up the dream--in life, you just have to be too determined to be defeated. It is at this point that the third key player enters the story.
Michael was a 2014 victim of my Kirtland's Warbler tours. If I wrote a factual book about our partnership, it probably would be a bestseller--in the fiction section. Michael has a unique problem: he has copious amounts of money, yet minimal time to think about its best allocation for adventures. I have the opposite problem, although it's not unique: minimal money, and copious time for planning adventures I can't afford. It's one of my favorite procrastination activities. For about the last year, I've been Michael's trip planner. One of the perks of this job is that sometimes, he takes me with him.
"Do you think Michael wants to go to Borneo?"
"Duh probably. Let me text him."
Indeed, Michael thought that paying for the three of us to spend two weeks in Borneo was a great use of his money. So did we.
So, on Friday March 13th, Katie and I (and later JP--Katie's boyfriend, with benefits and Gunnar, who Katie, JP, and I share as a boyfriend without benefits) headed to New York. Katie and I would fly to Kota Kinabalu by way of Hong Kong the next day.
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| #UCOC, NYC |
This night was noteworthy in its own regard, and involved skipping down city streets, annoying cab drivers, and seriously considering using our hotel pool for the purpose of giving fly-fishing lessons. However, even that is far less interesting than the adventures that were soon to befall us in Borneo, so the next post will jump right into those. Stay tuned!
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| Blue-eared Kingfisher, March 2015, Lower Kinabatangan |
