Page 57 of The Hitchhiker in Panama
“My dad said balls?”
“I am paraphrasing.”
“If he hurts you,” Marcella interrupted, “I’ll knee him in the junk.”
Elayna, who was using tongs to serve herself more salad, snapped them at Eivind’s crotch with a menacing look.
“Whoa! Why the hate on my balls?” Eivind cupped them protectively.
My phone chimed.
I love you, sweet pea.
* * *
The next twenty-four hours were a blur of activity. Each of the crew members would randomly pop their heads in to give me some advice:Lila, do you listen to podcasts? You should download some. Lila, did you buy enough shampoo? Lila, do you have enough clothes? You should buy a second bather.
With Jonas, I also went over safety stuff. Jonas showed me their medical kit, which contained several different antibiotics, pain medication, and anti-nausea pills. We talked about emergencies, weather, and how the boat would be able to communicate with people onshore, which meant I could email my parents.
“Come here.” Jonas crooked his finger, and I followed him to the desk. He pulled a slender book out of a plastic bag. The cover still had a price tag on it. “This is for you. It is more about the basics of sailing a small dinghy than a big oceangoing ship likeEik, but the principles are the same. You can learn the parts of the boat and some of the theory behind sailing, even more than you already know.”
“Oh wow.” I took the book and thumbed through it, looking at diagrams of little sailboats and wind vanes. “Thank you! I am so excited to learn more, and I’ll have plenty of time to read this underway.”
I also had my e-reader heaped full with books, hundreds of hours of podcasts downloaded, and though Marcella and Elayna kept reminding me of things I might need, they also assured me that if I ran out of anything, I could use some of theirs.
Not having boat projects to do, I tried to keep to myself during the day. Eivind often worked on various projects, and he had me sit beside him while he worked. He called them “one-and-a-half-person jobs”—Eivind worked while I read next to him, and sometimes he would ask me to hand him a tool or flip a switch or dump some wash water overboard.
I voraciously read blogs about sailing while I still had access to the internet. The sailing itself would be boring, and I wondered if I had enough to occupy myself for twenty-five days. I was sure I had enough books and podcasts, but what if I tired of them?
It was five o’clock on our final night in Panama City. Marcella was slumped in the main salon, a damp cloth over her eyes. She’d spent the entire day organizing, cleaning, and reorganizing the galley.
Elayna stroked her hair. “What can I do to help?”
Marcella moaned. “I have to take one more trip to the store.”
Elayna tsk-tsked. “Can I cook dinner while you do that?”
Eivind perked up. “I can make Spamaroni?”
“No!” Elayna and Marcella shouted together.
I giggled.
Peeking out from under the cloth, Marcella looked at Elayna. “There is lettuce and chicken for a salad. Can you just make a balsamic dressing?”
“Of course.”
I stood up. “I’ll help, and Eivind can drive you to shore.”
Elayna and I busied ourselves around the galley, washing and chopping vegetables. Marcella would replace everything we used tonight with more fresh goods during her final trip to the supermarket. Her level of planning was epic. The fridge was stuffed full of fresh produce, and cans were stacked in every nook and cranny imaginable, not just in the galley, but under the floorboards and cushions. Sheets of paper were stacked up, her notes for meal planning:Day 1 dinner: rice salad; Day 2 dinner: chicken curry.
“Do you feel like you did everything you wanted to while you were here?” I asked Eivind when he returned. “I mean, you were in Panama for what? A few days before I met you? You may have been in the country two weeks, but I don’t think you explored much.”
“You are right. I did not see much. It happens everywhere we go. Someone might fly to Panama City and spend two weeks and tour everything they wanted. For us a two-week visit is really only a few days. There is so much more we have to do to just live.”
“Nah, yeah. I guess you all have been busy with provisioning and projects and paperwork. That’s tough.”
“It can be. But Jonas made the decision to sail quickly through the route he wanted to take. People circumnavigate the world in fifteen months or fifteen years.”
