oh to be your constant companion

last year i went to panama city beach in florida for a work trip.

i was there for about a week. i spent most of the daytime in a warehouse
setting things up for an optical experiment we were running,
and i spent the evenings after work hours were over doing
whatever took my fancy that day.

i tried a lot of different food places. seafood boils, crabs, ice creams,
coffee shops, chicken, and burgers. i went to a local bar for some wings.

i also visited a few locations for photo taking opportunities, although
my camera had run out of batteries after the first day of taking pictures, sadly.
luckily the pictures i got on the first day were pretty awesome.

i snuck onto a resort beach and used their amenities while acting like
a patron of the premises for a while on the last day. i got to go to
the beach after work a few times with the people i was with.

this was all the while i was driving around in a rented volkswagen jetta
listening to Jamie Paige’s “Constant Companions” album featuring the vocaloid
Kasane Teto. i was speaking to a friend at the time about getting into Teto,
and this was the perfect jumping point as someone who needed to hear english.

whenever i listen to Constant Companions now, i look back fondly on that fleeting
summer week i spent all by myself in a state i had never been in and in a place
where nobody knew me.

thanks for reading today’s post.
maybe i’ll do another solo trip in the future.