I judge everything these days upon whether or not I’m able to write a great essay from the experience (and/or adventure) and the consequential aftermath. This most recent trip was so great that the idea for an essay started percolating in my mind not even a quarter of the way into the experience. In fact, I got so excited about the prospect of writing an essay related to the adventure that I ended up becoming very anxious as my friend and I drove over the pass (noticed all the new snow…), and got back home on the afternoon of the 25^th. Wish I owned a laptop computer in this particular instance.

Word Count: 1,392

Your Average Neanderthal’s

Attempts to Embrace

 Social Media

Here in Colorado, we’re experiencing a prolific season for snow in winter 2022-23, and despite the fact that I love snow and skiing in all its incarnations, I’ve grown tired of having to shovel all that white stuff every three or four days for basically the past four months. With that in mind, way back in early March, I decided I wanted to visit a tropical beach resort type country, rather than impose upon a buddy in NYC. The beach vacation seemed like just what the doctor ordered.

Two weeks ago, I flew down to Costa Rica to participate in an Intrepid Travel tour to get an all-too-brief taste for the country. Prior to the trip, I’d done almost everything I needed to do in order to get ready short of purchasing an updated cell phone. The existing unit I currently use is an IPhone #8 that was purchased prior to a similar Intrepid Travel trip in April of 2019. As we all know, if you’re a functioning member of modern society you need to have the latest smart phone at your ready disposal. This situation is basically a, “Keeping-up-with-the-Jones”  type of conundrum on steroids, and if you aren’t regularly doing this, things could get quite dire.

So ominous that I can foresee a near-future scenario where if you haven’t bought the new IPhone #87 society will no doubt consider you to be an abject failure. In this case, you might as well relocate to that troll cave in Iceland. Temperatures can shift drastically in the cave because of a nearby volcano. Going from an Arctic-chill low of -48 degrees C. to a downright balmy high of 52 degrees C. within a two-minute span when the volcano is erupting. By the way, you’ll note that I’ve gone Metric in this particular instance. How considerate of me to do this for all our non-American statistical experts out there don’t you think?

I knew I was in trouble when I first stepped onto the airplane going from Denver to Houston.  Both of the guys who sat next to me didn’t speak a single word and only one of them even acknowledged my existence when I tapped him on the shoulder so he could move in order for me to get up to visit the facilities. Both of them kept their eyes squarely glued to their phones as they carried out various activities and soon I noted that the screen on my smart-phone was cloudier than the mind of your average drug addict coming down from a particularly amazing mind trip to a galaxy far, far away. Rather than try to keep up with the boys in the smart-phone usage department, I ended up doing what I’m accustomed to carrying out in these social media road block situations; I just sat there being bored.

Then when I got to San Jose, CR I met the members of our group, 6 women and 2 guys (me being one of them…). Sort of like the situation I confronted while growing up of having 5 sisters and no brothers. Over the course of the next two days I learned the bitter truth. All of them were experts at using their phones while I continued to try and climb Mount Everest in my trusty pair of rusted roller-skates. One of them was even an employee of “Google” itself, and this alone entitled her to finding information at a faster rate than I usually do when working off my desktop IMAC computer with the 21” monitor (Macs RULE by the way…). It seemed fairly sophisticated when I bought the thing way back in 2016, now it’s a relic?

Our tour guide was also smart-phone savvy and informed us on numerous occasions that whenever he needed to send a message to us, rather than doing things the Old-School way, he’d post a message on our What’s App. download. At least I had that App on my phone (even though I rarely use it…) so that problem was sort of solved. Now all I had to do was locate the icon through all that screen dust, assorted scratches, and collected crude.

Everyone was very helpful towards the cave-man dwelling within their midst. This included the 15-year-old daughter of the “Google Lady” who must’ve thought to herself just how did this AARP-Approved, Mentally-Deficient, senior citizen, end up hanging out with us?

Then about a third of the way into the trip, I came to the ignominious conclusion that maybe all of them felt sorry for yours truly because I’ve perfected my Sad-Puppy-Dog facial expression over the years into a razor-sharp ability. I came upon this line of reasoning during a post-dinner conversation. All of us agreeing that dogs happen to be some of the best animals to have as pets and companions. You do have to clean up after them on a regular basis, but then again, most guys happen to be a similar clean-up predicament foisted upon the women in their lives? At least that’s what I’ve been told.

One of the niftier tricks you can carry out with your smart phone is the taking of photos that come out with amazing precision and clarity in order to collect for future memories. This task was carried out with notable expertise by the Philippine girl from Australia, Google-Lady, her daughter, the Cuban guy living in Switzerland, and the Irish lass who’s relocated to Vancouver. All of them aspiring Dian Arbus, or Ansel Adams types. The Filipino girl even being a professional photographer of the highest quality.

Numerous opportunities presented themselves during the Costa Rican Experience including the Arenal Volcano Hike, a Forest-Canopy suspension-bridge jaunt, our night-hike, and the beach resort National Park odyssey. Since I have a habit of taking very few photographs that dates back to my East African dazes of the 80s, once again I found myself squarely ensconced in the Cro-Magnon lane.

Here’s the thing, I happen to be locked into this weird position that a lot of people don’t realize I’m in. In some respects, I’m very media savvy. Examples include the fact that I’ve got a writing website that I continue to be updated regularly, go to the Internet consistently while writing these essays (Wikipedia is an invaluable asset), and more or less know how to integrate certain information off the Net.  In others, I’m very much of a Luddite. Got talked into getting a Facebook account by one of my sisters four years ago. Despite the fact that I’m in the correct age demographic to use Facebook, I have no idea what my password is nor ever envision actually using this media platform in any way.

I will continue to contend that I can write faster off a computer keyboard than most folks can text with only their thumbs. These Emails use actual paragraphs and sentences too by the way. Since this happens to be the case, I do text while at work, but despise the task with a deep-seated passion.

As a final comment, I need to point this out. I promised on more than one occasion to the British lady living in Sydney that I’d purchase an updated version of my smart-phone and diligently learn how to use all its bells-and-whistles effectively. Partially because its screen should actually project clear images (what a concept?)

While waiting to get on the plane returning from San Jose, CR to Houston, I decided to buy a book to stem the impending flight boredom. Did it the Old-School way by purchasing a text with its obligatory dead-tree pages. Old habits do indeed die hard in this instance.