Danny & Pork Chop Go Caribbean Day One: The Disastrous Journey Take One

It's not often that I run into so many issues when I go on a trip, but this has to be the worst start off to any trip I've ever had. Not including me having to cancel my Eastern European tour because I got sick. That was a different matter entirely. Things just snowballed out of control and my frustrations let to a cancelled trip abroad but staying and doing day trips to zoos and aquariusm that are near by. May 2021 I made my appointment to get covid tested to head to San Juan. I went to a reputable testing site to have my PCR test ran, since they wouldn't accept a rapid test. I got my test results the day that I was supposed to go saying that I was negative. Excited and ready to hit the open road once again, Pork Chop and I gathered our things and headed to the train station; but not before popping a few of the Mixed Berry Jerry's Picks edbible gummies. (There is a review coming for that soon. I think I have a draft on here or on my desk somewhere. And that place is always chaos.) The train pulling into the station makes me weak in the ankles. The vibrations are driving me crazy. With this high everything is magnified. I feel so small next to this best made of steel. It’s amazing. As usual, I’m hypnotised by the rotation of the wheels. The vibration of the train is echoing through the hollowness of my bones. The world around me is moving in slow motion. My anxiety has melted away while I sway, like the Lorax high in the trees, to the throbbing beat of Mask Wolf’s Astronauts in the Ocean. It feels so surreal that I’m travelling with a mask strapped to my face. This is my first time venturing out of my little bubble since the start of the pandemic. I love how we refer to it as ‘the pandemic’ and we automatically know what one. But in a few years time, it will be known as the ‘pandemic of the early 2020’s’ or ‘The Covid Pandemic’ there’s a few more I can think of. It’s a soon toe be a think in the past. Or what if we have to wear masks for the rest our lives. I start screaming internally at this prospect while blurs of various greens, browns and greys flash by me. I’m watching it out of the corner of my eye. The train is slowing down. We can’t be in Framingham yet. Oh no. What if dementors are coming on board? I have to keep the panic inside me. I can't let the people around me know that I'm about to have a shit attack. My thoughts are all over the place. Pork Chop is curled up in my arm watching the scenery pass us by. We slow to a stop. I look out the window. Nothing there. This is just the high making me this paranoid. The last time I was on a train that stopped in the middle of a journey was because someone jumped onto the tracks and got hit by the train. (I love trains more than you can imagine. Inside I'm just a big 9 year old who loves trains, dinosaurs and outerspace. Despite my love for space I can't believe in the moonlanding. I dunno, just seems like at that time that it wasn't something technology was capable of. I don't believe the Earth is flat though. Give me some credit here.) There's no announcements made. 10 minutes goes by. 20 minutes goes by. Still no announcement. The people in the back of the coach I'm in are starting to get unruly. My anxiety shoots up as they start to raise their voices. They're saying that it's bullshit that we don't know what's going on and that they have places to go. I agree with them. I want to just get to my hotel and have a snack and pass out. I put my headphones in to try and dull out my anxiety. 45 minutes go by and they are completely out of their minds. I can hear them over my headphones. I didn't think my anxiety could go any higher, but it does. I hear them talking about getting up and going to speak to the driver. I don't blame them, but they need to cut out the yelling. Adults don't yell and scream when things don't go their way. It's a sick feeling that I have to worry about one of them having a gun and going mental in the coach; but it's something that crosses my mind as a man dressed as some sort of cowboy storms to the front of the train yelling that he's going to get some answers. I slink down in my seat, Pork Chop down my shirt, hoping that he doesn't notice me. He slams through the door, not seeming to notice me. Please Christ don't let him see me on the way back if he's going to do anything. I don't know if he has a weapon or not, I just want to be prepared to jump off the train if he does. Fuck my clothes, I'll grab my laptop bag that has all my important shit in it, hold onto Pork Chop tight and jump for my life. He comes back about 15 minutes later, slamming through the door as the same fury as before. He announces that we should be moving within 10 minutes. 10 minutes passes and we start rolling again. We stop at Frammingham quickly and heaad back on our way to Boston. I sigh with relief that nothing happened. We're beyond late getting into the station in Boston. Thankfully, the rest of the journey was not that eventful. People push by me on their way out of the coach and I just let them go. I don't need that big angry lady with a moustache and a ACDC tattoo to get in my face. I exit the station, hail a taxi and head to my hotel which isn't too far away from the central station. Well, I call it the central station, but it's really South Station. So many memories of there. Flying in from the UK and Germany mainly. Good, good times. They feel lightyears away for some reason. Something is bothering me about that email. I only glanced at it and saw the negative result. I read the bottom of the email that tells me that the sample has been compromised and they can't guarentee a negative result. My stomach drops. I'm on the train. I should have known better. I should have known that this was going to happen. The dread that I had felt in my stomach for days begins to haunt me. My mood begins to swing even deeper down. Guilt starts to pool in the bottom of my veins. I should have known better than to try and do something for myself. At least it feels that way. The dissapointment is heavy. I'd been looking forward to this trip for a month and a half. I have no idea why I feel guilty. I have no reason to. It's through no fault of my own that this happened. I listened to what I was supposed to do. I can't fucking believe this. Everything was paid for in advance. About 800.00 worth of shit, not including the flight there. All together it was about 1200. I can get part of the money back and that pleases me. I need to find out if I still can go at all. I'm exhausted and coming down from a high. I need to sleep it off and look at it fresh and early in the morning before my flight. I know I'm cutting it close to the wire, but the flight doesn't leave until 12.30 and I'm 10 minutes from the airport. I can race there if I need to. I just need to get into my hotel room and sleep. I get up early and start looking into it. I can pay for a test when I arrive at the airport. But I have to quarentine for 48 hours or longer until the test results come back. I will miss out on two of the things that I want to do. I'm only there for a week. I was really looking forward to snorkelling there. I wanted to do something new and add to my catalague of experiences. I look into staying somewher else since I'll need a negative result to stay at the BNB that I booked. I don't blame him, I'd want any visitors to be negative too, even if it wasn't a rule. Almost everything is gone but expensive places. I don't want to spend $200.00 a night on a hotel room if I have to be there for 2 or 3 nights. Its moronic. That would be what I paid to stay at the BNB and then some! I'm crushed. I can't swing this not with everything that's going on. I want to curl up and cry. My panic level is on high volume and I can't calm down. I have no one to help me figure out what I'm going to do. If I do this it will cost me $700 for 3 days and I can't go anywhere. That's not worth it. I'm crestfallen. I'm able to get refunds on most of the things. So I cancel them and get a refund on my flight. Thank fuck I bought travel insurance. (I highly recommend it for people who travel often as I generally do.) I think about all the things I got for the trip and all that I spent. My stomach sinks. I hate waste and especially wasteful spending. I'll have to return my snorkel gear because I'm not going to snorkel anytime soon here. TO BE CONTINUED... I'm sorry this blog is so late. I had it saved on my Macbook Air and I just forgot about finishing the story. I guess I just thought it wasn't something anyone cared about, that I had better content to put out there. But then I realised, I do most of these blogs for me. It's great when people read them, react to them and share them, but this blog is also my journal. A scrapbook of my life if you will. I like to share with people on here so I can make new friends and others can feel less alone when they read my blogs. This will be blow 728. I can't believe that I've done so many. I know I took a bit of a hiatus in the last part of 2020 and into 2021. I didn't have the energy to do the blogs. I sunk into a deep depression. I'm working on that with my medical team. I've started to write more. Probably with me being out of work for a month, I've had time to really focus on the blog. I have a new job that I start in 10 days and I couldn't be more excited. It's a dream job; although it is temp to hire. I know that I have what it takes to do it. More on that coming later. : )