please, just one more chance to soak it all in

I'm not sure what most guys find so special about the bowl. When i want to relax, I head for the tub.

Tonight's bath was a thing of beauty. Even if I could still hear Chuck Hughes seeping under the bathroom door. it was fairly easy to ignore the iron chef and sink into One Hundred Years of Solitude. I can't believe how good this book has been to me this past month. Perhaps good books always feel that way. Let's just say that between Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Leonard Cohen, I am definitely not lacking in role models.

But what was actually most inspiring tonight was not so much sweating through the final moments of Colonel Aureliano Buendia but the actual bath itself. Something about watching the steam rise and coat the walls of the washroom is therapeutic beyond simply warming my bones. Strange, ever since Davey Cleinfeld and I took that last-minute trip to Spa le Finlandais just before Christmas, I have been counting the weeks until it's fairly reasonable to go back. I have been craving the saunas and steam room the way i crave Sushi or Rolo Ice Cream. Except I think what I'm really craving is something much more specific. I want to jump into one of those natural Volcanic hot springs that you find in Iceland or Argentina- or the ones Amy and I visited when we went to Costa Rica several years back.

It's funny because I remember not really being all that interested in visiting those springs when we were actually there four years back. The traveller in me thought it would be a waste of good nature-seeking time. The judgmental bastard in me was obviously was proven wrong. Still, as relaxing and beautiful as it was to be lying in those steaming pools of dark water and staring at the Mountains, I remember getting fed up and being anxious to leave. Always so anxious to leave, to move on to the next thing.

So naturally I had to ask Amy if said hot springs exist in Panama, the current topic of travel. Yes, there is one but it is rather difficult to get to. In other words, a challenge with a defined reward. If I do ever make it there, i'm going to soak myself to spiritual bliss or prune up trying.