Seen Through Black Eyes

Hello adventurers!

This is Darwin and thank you for joining me for episode 5 of Seen Through Black Eyes

Today I'm going to talk about a little mini trip that I had taken when I was working for this small airline to Nassau, The Bahamas. I can't tell you exactly when this trip took place because I can't remember the dates. I do know that… and it was when I was working for this airline, which was between August of ‘86 through June of ‘88.

So, I had worked there for 22 months, and I'm assuming that this trip…. I can't imagine it came before I took my Africa trip, which I talked about in the previous episode, because I started in August, and then I won those tickets in December. It may have been in between the two Africa trips.

I think it was, I know…let me correct myself. It was a winter trip, and I just decided that I wanted to get away for a long weekend. And one of the advantages of working for an airline, is you could do that. So, the average person for a long weekend may hop in the car and go somewhere within a couple of hundred miles, maybe to the mountains or if they're close to a beach, or any other type of place in between those two options.

When you work for an airline, your long weekend can be an international trip, such was the case here. I can remember that it was, I can't remember if it was…. I doubt if it was December but could have January-February. And I say that because, the flight that I took working for this carrier went from New York to Chicago. And we know what Chicago winters can be like.

Well, this weekend that I decided to go, Chicago was having one of its typical winter days. So, I'm pretty sure that it was the first time that had been on an airplane, where I flew through snow. As the plane departed from New York, there was no snow, it was cold. But when we began to land in Chicago and go through the clouds, it was turbulent, bumpy knocking us around a little bit.

And then once we broke through the clouds there's snow. And I’m like…it was my first experience, so I'm like, this plane is flying through snow. So we land, and make our way to the gate, and it's freezing and I'm dressed for the Bahamas. Obviously the plane is heated and the terminal is, but the jetway---not so much.

Once I get into the terminal, everyone there is dressed appropriately because it's January or February and it's Chicago. So… now I get on the connecting flight. The connecting flight is from Chicago to the Bahamas…The Nassau.

So… get on the flight, flight takes off… everything is fine taking off I was a little bit concerned because again, I had never flown through snow. The flight was not canceled…that was my concern. I'm not sure if it's psychological, “I doubt it”… but it seemed as if the further south we went, the warmer the plain got…

Anyway….arrived into Nassau…landed and I was like, “This is the life!”. In New York it was probably 30°F, and here it is in January or February and it's like 80°.

I almost felt like this wasn’t even fair. Do people in New York know that it's like 85° here in the Bahamas and they’re freezing?” …Anyway…

I traveled just with carry-on and so once the plane landed I get my luggage of the overhead being an employee we get the option of flying in whatever seat is available and it's based off of your seniority.

So I was able to fly down to the Bahamas in first class. So the way that it works is, obviously anybody that purchases a first-class ticket they're going to get on. Then you would go to frequent flyers and they would bump them up.

Most people listening to this podcast knows how that part works, but from the aspect of the traveling employee how it works is once that's all settled and there are a couple of seats available then they go by seniority.

They look at employees that are traveling to this particular destination, and then they look at your seniority, and they will assign the seats based off of your seniority and based on availability. What I mean by that is… let's say there are two seats available in first class, but you are traveling but that say yourself, your significant other and a teenager or adult child. So do you want a separate or do you all want to all sit together?

If you want to all sit together then, they'll put you in economy and those two seats will still be available. If you want to split up, then you split up…you know like that.

So….based on my seniority in the availability of first-class seats I was able to get first class so I flew down first class so that was my first experience there.

Anyway…I get my luggage and now I'm making my way to the hotel. And once I get to the hotel unpack…and I'm not wasting any time, because I'm only there for a few days…and it's 85°!

So go out…venture out…head to - I don't even know if I went to the beach right away, but just to be outside…shorts, t-shirt I'm not sure if I had on slipper, sandals or whatever. But I just wanted to be outside soaking up the sun because this is going to be a recurring theme here.

It was 85° in January or February and I was loving it!

I did some sightseeing and one of the things that I notice kind of interesting is I saw a lot of pink buildings, and I didn't do the research on that beforehand but discovered that all of the government buildings were pink…how about that?

Let's just let that digest for a second. So I did a little bit of bar hopping, just really relaxed. That's what it was all about. I just wanted to get away from the cold. I think I had worked a very long stretch doing some overtime, not necessarily with the purpose of saving up money to go on vacation but probably for something else.

Also that the pay was pretty low, so I was just doing overtime just to get ahead, or buy something, which I cannot remember at this point. And then after all that I'm working, I was just like you know what I just thought that I needed to take advantage of this so…

I think it was a situation where on a Tuesday, I had decided that I'm going to take a trip. And then on Thursday, I'm in the Bahamas. The cost for air travel was 0 dollars and 0 cent.

So that was a good price for me…

Anyway… so I am doing some sightseeing, soaking up the warm weather, and at the hotel where I was staying there was a young lady there that I was flirting with, and she was receptive.

Every opportunity that I had I would have came back into…. if I did some shopping for souvenirs, I’d come back and put it put the stuff away. And I probably then started coming back and forth on purpose just to run into her and do some more flirting.

And the flirting was successful, because the next day, she took the day off. I don't know the particulars on whether she called out, or you know just maneuvered things around, or if it was a regular day off. I do not get the impression that it was her regular day off. But anyway, so we did that and hung out that next day.

And I cannot recall specifically all of the things that we did. Obviously, we went got something to eat… I'm sure she showed me around to places on the island that most tourist would not get to see…which I cannot really recall.

I do have some photos, and I know I've said it several times, I plan on uploading some photos and I'll add some caption to the photos. But I know that we hung out that entire day. And I was probably leaving the next day and I think that's the reason why she took the day off is because the day following I was heading back.

It was a very short trip but very relaxing… and you know we just hung out and we had a good time enjoying each other's company. So we exchanged information and we stayed in contact for a little bit.

Now keep in mind we're talkin about the mid to late 80s, so social media didn't exist. Unlike now will you have all of these apps like WhatsApp and you can communicate with people around the world really with no additional cost outside of whatever internet access cost you have to pay. You had to use regular phone lines and you also had to use “snail mail”. So communication sort of faded away after a little bit, but interestingly enough that is not where the story ends.

Not that anything really super major, but just kind of ironic and in just to go to show the power of the technology as far as a social media is concerned. And I say that because in 2009 so how many years later is that?

Is it ‘86 …’86..’96..’06… So what 23 years later ? I get a friend request on Facebook. And with the friend request, all you saw was like a thumbnail, so it's kind of a small picture and I'm like okay I don't know who that is.

So I'm not the kind of person one that just accepts friend request on any social media which nobody should…I do not. But on several occasions when I do get a friend request if it's someone that I do not know, I have sent messages back saying “I think you sent this to me by accident.” and that's what I did.

And then she followed up with, “Oh I'm sorry, I just remembered I met a Darwin Hanna from New York back in the middle 80s. Now I'm curious, I'm like “Um…I'm Darwin Hanna, and I'm from New York…

Um, I guess she also mentioned that she met Darwin Hanna from New York in the Bahamas because my response was I'm Darwin Hannaisi from New York and I went to the Bahamas in the middle 80s.

So now I'm curious and I look at the photo much more closely, and then I start digging through a photo album. Because again, remember back in the middle 80s… I don't know if there were digital cameras back then? And if so, they were probably so damn expensive I couldn't afford it, so I had the regular camera so I had a physical photo.

But what I did was I took my “newfangled” digital camera and took a picture of it, and then uploaded it and sent it to her.

And I said, “Is this you?”

Because I had a photo, which again, I will upload, had a photo of myself and her sitting like on a sofa or something like that…at the hotel.

So her response was, “Oh my God, I can't believe you still have that photo!”

So it turned out it was her. So that was interesting, and we have intermittently been in contact or communicate is a better way of saying it. We have intermittently stayed in communication with each other, in contact with each other. So she told me about her family, and we just got caught up but, we have not met face-to-face since that reach out via Facebook back in 2009.

So this trip is very vague. I don't remember a lot of it myself. I have spoken with her and she like why is it the same way really doesn't remember that much but I did think that it was quite interesting that she remembered my name. I guess my name is a lot more impactful than I ever thought not necessarily just because of that experience, but people have told me that my name was interesting and I usually go back and tell them that I have grown into my name, because growing up, I… let's see how can I put this I hated it.

And it was mainly because… it was kind of it was unusual. It was difficult to pronounce, and people butchered it and yeah but I've grown into it now.

And as you get older and people change, I don't know where I'm going with this here… but I don't have difficulty with my name anymore and I've grown into it and I've owned it so there…

So this is where we will end this episode. It was a short episode, because it was a very short trip and I don't remember too much about it. One thing I can say is that I cannot remember what year it was but, years later my brother and I…one of my brothers younger brother, my younger brother and I went to the Bahamas.

So… I did take a second trip there, and it was more just hanging out on the beach, hanging out at night… seeing what kind of… as John Lewis would say “good trouble” we could get into. But that's kind of a blur as well, so not much there.

Anyway, I'm going to end this here and the next time around the next episode I'm going to talk about a trip that I took to Montreal, Canada. There’s a couple things I can talk about regarding that and why….

So thank you for sticking around all the way to the end and look forward to talking with you guys in the next episode.

END.