I recently vacationed aboard a small cruise boat in the West Indies. The boat, equipped with sails, claims to be the world's largest yacht. It is named the Wind Surf and it is operated by Windstar Cruises. Oddly enough, the parent company, American International headquartered in Seattle, declared bankruptcy this week. Because of the distance to the port of departure in Barbados, the flying from Seattle required one layover.
On the way there, Kim and I flew through JFK and stayed at a hotel in Queens. We had time to grab a subway into Manhattan and see the musical American Idiot on Broadway, based on the popular Green Day album and which was great fun. The next day, we flew from JFK to Barbados and stayed one night at the boutique hotel Little Arches and tried a bit of surfing before boarding the ship. I'm not a big fan of cruise boats. But I hoped this may be different. On a boat equipped with sails and only 300 passengers, I held out promise. Our itinerary: Bridgetown, Barbados; Bequia, Grenadines; Grenada; Mayreau, Grenadines; Dominica; Pigeon Island, St. Lucia.
As most travel goes, we are often out of our comfort zones, out of control, adventures and misadventures happen whether we like it or not. I wanted to write during my voyage but wasn't sure just what. So I bought the book 3 A.M. Ephiphany before leaving, which has a number of "uncommon writing" exercises for scenes in fiction. I played around with the exercises in the travel section. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I will post some of the resulting short essays based on these various themes - some on departures, some on arrivals, some on associations to other travels. I will post the first one later today. I hope you enjoy. Cheers!
Hi Tom -
Very creative writing activity and ideas! I look forward to your works! I hope to find them on http://redmondblog.org sidebar!
Posted by: Redmondneighbor | Saturday, April 02, 2011 at 05:38 PM