2004-02-05

IMPORTANT NEW NOTES FROM JUSTIN:

I�ve been traveling for 181 days! I just returned to Nashville after being in Miami for a week for the Winter Music Conference and M3 seminar series. And, I managed to find a place to stay here in Nashville!

I�m converting the diary entries and photos of my travels into a book. I�m still collecting content, too. So, I�m looking for nice, fun people who can put me up for a few nights, host me, and show me their flavor of America. I�m looking forward to learning about your life and writing about our times together! If you think it might be fun to host me for a day or two or three, email me at justingrace AT mac DOT com.

Please make sure to include your address and phone number in your email.

I am especially looking for places to stay in the southeast USA and everywhere on the East Coast. Here are the places I will be in the next few months that I am still looking for a place to stay at:

� North Carolina
� Tennessee
� Virginia/West Virginia

Please contact me ASAP if you want to hang out!

If you believe in what I am doing and want to help support me, please do so! You can donate money to me using PayPal or with a credit card. Email me for more information! Make sure to check out my photo sales page!

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US Tour Day 144: Key West. Again.

Today I lost a bit of virginity, something I didn't even realize I had left to lose. I went snorkeling for the first time.

Doug and I aboard the boat.

The water was the color of a sea foam green Fender Stratocaster. I'd always wondered where they got off calling that minty–green–blue color by any name that had to do with nature or the ocean. The ocean where I grew up was always murky brown or dirty dark blue with a hint of filth. But the sea here is nothing like that. It is instead the caricature of sea that we dream of as children, warm and gentle with smiling waves and turquoise waters.

And, what happened underneath the water was magical—maybe even better. Rainbow angelfish nibbled at coral—I could hear the sound of their teeth scraping the hard surface. Barracuda slid along the ocean floor a few feet below me, their long, dark bodies gliding like smoothly spaceships through the watery outer space. Social yellow fish followed me, seeming as curious about me and my strange ways as I was about them.

This huge world of underwater wonder is so close—so attainable. Yet it has been intellectually far away to me. I see pictures of bright fish and I think about them like Americans think about every other country on Earth—they aren't real; they don't actually exist; it's a fairy tale! But, now I know! The cornucopia of life called underwater is as real as Surenam and Ivory Coast and Canada.

If you have not visited the closest thing to outer space, I highly recommend it. It's quite friendly, it's not terribly far away, and you don't even have to bring a passport. Plus, the natives will never mind that you don't speak their language—they're more the silent types, anyways.

Back on dry ground that evening, Doug disobeyed a local shop–owner's sign.

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