Island Hopping and Vipassana

1. Dig out $25 Chinese suitcase purchased on last Asian adventure
2. Locate A4 binders from England from 5 years ago
3. Toss in 10 year old Birkenstocks
4. Add a book with a Buddha on the cover and some coat hangers, just in case… 

Friday, my last day in Montana, turned out to be a major day of waiting. One sees why the perfection of patience (Pāli: khanti-pāramitā) is so important in Buddhism and other spiritual traditions. I had a few, simple tasks to complete before getting to the airport: copy/scan a few documents at the library, bind them at the copy center, pick up foreign currency at the bank. Each, I thought, would take only a few minutes. But instead they wound up consuming about 90% of my afternoon.

In such times, two responses seem equally possible. One is to plan more. The other is to simplify.

And that brings us to here and now. In Avalon, on Catalina Island (pictured above), in perhaps the only coffee shop with wifi on the island. Apparently the island was once owned almost entirely by the Wrigley family – hi Cub fans – and the Cubs themselves spent time out here each year for spring training. Today the place is torn between crazy development and going broke, with most people who live there, and have lived there for a while, hoping for the latter. But at 2 hours by ferry and 15 minutes by helicopter away from one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world, this place has big $$ potential.

For my part, I camped, played cards and a couple rounds of mini-golf and ate oatmeal for breakfast; not exactly economy-stimulating activities. The one pricey thing I did end up getting talked into was para-sailing:

Me with my sister… It was fun, for sure, but, as my sister said, “once you’ve jumped out of a plane, everything else is just… blah.” Both of us have been skydiving and, yes, this is more like a ferris wheel than a roller-coaster. You’re lifted up. You come down. You go up again. You come down again. Nice views. Worth the price? Not really. Unless you’re rich and starving for ‘experiences’ to tell people about.  In fact that is how much of the tourist activity on Catalina Island seems to be focused. An expensive zip line to hang onto as you descend a mountain (whoo-wee), motorized pedal-bikes to tour the sites around Avalon, and so on. Good for some people – perhaps the family crowd – but not worth the extra dollars, IMHO. The mini-golf, cards, and oatmeal, on the other hand, were worth every penny.

Next up is finishing my syllabus for teaching in the fall (again…) and getting to the airport for Taiwan… More (hopefully), from there.