Chapter 5
Somewhere between yesterday and tomorrow, with a story in my pocket...
The Green Giant is still putting up a fight.
The water has changed from a deep green to something closer to blue-green, which I suppose counts as progress. Every morning starts the same way: clean the filter, empty the leaves, check the chemicals, and hope today's effort nudges the water one shade closer to blue.
Some victories happen slowly.
After that, I took Peter to work, spent a few hours driving Uber, and kept one eye on my old Prius. The hybrid battery has been running hotter than it should, and now the check engine light has joined the conversation with an EGR code. Another little mystery waiting to be solved.
Not every day needs to be exciting.
Sometimes life is simply maintenance—of pools, cars, homes, and ourselves.
A Reflection
Today Natalie mentioned something she'd like to do someday.
She wants to take the train from Tampa to Lakeland.
It made me smile because, to me, trains have never been just transportation.
They're memories.
When I was a boy growing up near Saint Petersburg, every summer my parents took me on a train to Sochi, on the Black Sea. The journey lasted almost two and a half days.
I loved every minute of it.
The first two days belonged to forests, rivers, little villages, and endless fields rolling past the window. I could spend hours just watching Russia drift by, wondering what life was like in every little town we passed.
But the third day was different.
Around noon, everyone on the train quietly knew what was coming.
Someone would always spot it first.
"The sea..."
Suddenly the Black Sea appeared outside the window, stretching farther than I could imagine. For the next few hours, the train followed the coastline, and I couldn't look away.
Even now, decades later, I can still picture that moment.
Funny how the idea of taking a short train ride from Tampa to Lakeland can bring back memories of a journey across an entire country.
Maybe memories don't measure distance.
Maybe they measure moments.
The Man from the Past
The Man from the Past began the morning with another determined assault on the Emerald Sea.
Armed with bottles of mysterious potions and a curious machine that swallowed leaves before demanding to be fed again, he worked from sunrise until breakfast.
The Emerald Sea remained defiantly unconvinced.
Later that afternoon, word reached him of a small iron carriage that traveled across the kingdom on shining rails.
He smiled.
Long ago, he had crossed an empire aboard such a machine.
For days he watched forests march past his window. Villages waved from distant hills. Rivers slipped beneath old bridges.
Then, on the third morning, the Great Water finally appeared.
No wizard announced it.
No trumpet sounded.
Someone simply whispered,
"There it is..."
Every traveler leaned toward the window like a child seeing the world for the very first time.
The Man from the Past smiled.
Some journeys never truly end.
They simply wait patiently for another train.
📍 The 27th Parallel
Current Camp: Florida, USA
Direction: Westward, one story at a time.
Today's Steps: (Your phone knows.)
Stories Collected: 5
A story safely tucked into my pocket.