Travel Tales - Poor Floyd Preston

June 15, 1996

Poor Floyd

"Floyd!" I yelled as I ran down to the river. A white face, eyes sunken as if they had seen death glanced up at me. "Floyd, are you all right?" Floyd grabbed the long rod a rescuer held out from the raft.

"My back is killing me," he said.

"You're suppose to swan dive off the platform, not walk off."

Floyd looked up at me again. I detected a tone of 'now you tell me' in his reply. I held out my hand to help him from the raft. "I thought you said you would never bungy jump."

"Yeah, but it was free. I won it at a bar in Queenstown last night. Everyone must have written Floyd Preston on their bar receipts," he said. "Man, never jump with a hangover."

I gave Floyd a ride back to the city and we exchanged traveller's tales.

"So what happened to you in Fiji?" I asked. One minute you were there, the next you were gone."

"I went off to get a taste of the local life. Ya know, when in Rome. But that taste cost me two weeks on the can."

"You didn't drink the Yaquina did you?"

"Yeah, they kept passing the bowl and yelling Bula, so I kept chugging it down. Man was I wasted. Hey nice car."

Floyd was playing with the radio. He'd told me earlier that he was a car buff and I couldn't understand why he thought my heap was even worth a mention.

"This heap? well it runs."

"I bought a car too."

"Yeah? Did you get a good deal?"

"If ya call two liters to a 100 kilometers good, then I suppose I did."

"Two to a hundred. Wow! That's fantastic, Is that petrol or diesel?"

"That's Oil." He shook his head and chuckled. "It's a real smoker."

"Good luck selling it," I said.

"Luck. That's what the person who sold it to me had. I was at the car auction and this bucket of rust gets pushed to the platform. It had sucker written all over it. Nobody's going to buy that, I thought. The bidding started. I swatted at a mosquito. Sold."

"Did you tell them you didn't want it?"

"It didn't help. They just kept repeating the words "Sold Mate." Hey that's my car right over there," Floyd pointed out the window. "Pull over here."

My wheels hadn't even stopped spinning before Floyd was out the door.

"Oh man!" The passenger door of his car was wide open. "Damn, they got my boots. Last week they got my Pack. I should have gotten that door fixed."

Over dinner I offered Floyd my old duffle bag. He told me more of his travel stories none of which I could hope to top and then we said good-bye.

"I have to be up early tomorrow," Floyd said. "I'm going jet boating. Won that at a bar too. Man, I hate boats."

After that I didn't expect to see Floyd again. He was headed to Indonesia in a few weeks and I was off to Australia at the beginning of February.

"Take care of yourself."

"Yeah, you too."

But I did see Floyd again. At least I thought I did. He was hanging out the door of an over-crowded bemo in Bali. "Floyd!" I yelled, but he was swallowed up by a crowd of locals trying to get on board. After that Floyd seemed to pop up almost everywhere. I began to wonder if I was being followed. In Malaysia I met Floyd on a floating restaurant in the jungles of Taman Negara National Park. His hair had grown long and he had it tied in a pony tail. His beard had grown out too and with his flip-flop sandals and tie-dyed pants he looked a bit like a hippy-throw back. But then, that did seem to match his life-style.

"How are you Floyd?"

"Hot."

I looked down at his black duffle bag. "Hey, you still have that thing?"

"It's the only thing I seem to be able to hang on to," he sighed. "Lost another pack in Kuala Lumpur. My plane got in late and I couldn't find a vacant room anywhere in Chinatown, so I slept in a lobby. "

I could understand how he felt. "That's the pits," I said. "I had to sleep in the Honolulu airport once and I didn't get a wink."

Floyd let his eyes follow the canoe that was pulling across the water with more restaurant passengers. "Well I slept as sound as a baby," he said. "When I woke up my pack was gone. Again."

"How's the rest of your trip been?" I was almost afraid to ask. Floyd didn't seem to be having a run on luck.

"Not so bad really." But the sound of his voice left me wondering. "Had some ferry trouble out of Sulawesi. I took the two night ferry to save a few rupiah."

"I didn't know they had rooms on those ferries."

"Well, they don't," Floyd looked out again over the water. "I never did like boats," he mumbled. "I sat on my pack all night in the lower deck of that stinking boat, crammed in with about a thousand other people. There were rats running over my legs. I got locked in the bathroom for over an hour too while they were collecting tickets. No toilet in Southeast Asia scares me now."

I found it hard not to laugh. Floyd seemed to have an uneven share of bad-luck. I wanted to say that maybe he should be more cautious in the future, instead I said, "I would have jumped ship."

"I did. After thirty hours I got out in Surabaya. I was suppose to go all the way to Jakarta."

"Hey, it could be worse." I was trying to sound positive, to reassure him that everyone has travel woes. "You could have caught Malaria."

"I did. The worst kind."

"What?"

"Yeah, in Sulawesi. I was in the hospital for a week. They thought I had a gall stone, gave me some pills. I called my doctor back home and he told me if I took those pills they would have killed me. So, yeah," Floyd smiled, "I guess it could be worse."

"Your a basket case." I didn't mean to say it, it just slipped out.

"I know," he said, "but I'm turning a new leaf. From now on, I'm not going to do any dumb things.

I was glad to hear it. "Hey, did you ever sell that oil guzzler in New Zealand?"

Floyd starts laughing, "Just dumped it on the side of the road."

"You just dumped it?"

"Eh, I was late for the airport. Figured I wasn't gonna get anything for it anyway."

"Well we sold our car to a Swedish couple." I pause and grinned. "At the auction. I just walked onto the floor and grabbed the first two people I saw with backpacks. Told them I had a beauty outside. It worked out pretty good for both of us."

"I wished I'd sold mine. The New Zealand Police came looking for me."

"Just for dumping your car?"

"No, someone took it." Floyd leaned into the table. "They used it in a bank heist. They think it was me." He shook his head and laughed. "Can you imagine? The getaway car leaving this long trail of blue smoke. The police bagged those bozos. But the car was still registered to me, so they thought I was the mastermind." He put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair, tipping it on it's two hind legs. "Well, they'll never find me here."

The sun was starting to dip below the horizon and I could see the mosquitos buzzing over the water. "Well, time to head in," I said. "Hey, good seeing you again. Try to stay out of trouble will ya?"

"Yeah, same to you," Floyd said.
I stepped into the canoe and waved good-bye. Floyd stayed on the floating restaurant sipping his orange soda and no doubt giving blood to the growing swarm.

"Floyd. What are you doing up there?" My words were swept away with the wind. He didn't hear me. I didn't expect to see Floyd again, at least not alive. Of course in the situation he was presently in, I doubted he'd be alive much longer. He was sitting on the top of a bus we had just passed on the way to Pokhara in Nepal. I'd heard stories about people riding on the top of local buses but I couldn't imagine anyone I knew being so dumb as to actually do it. Until now. "Floyd!" I yelled again, leaning further out my window. I think he might have heard me. He stood up and turned his head but his long hair instantly blew across his face. "No, Floyd. Bridge!" I sat back down in my seat. Poor Floyd, I thought. I hope he knows what he's doing.

Floyd didn't cross my mind again until I was half way through my trek into the Himalayas. I was hiking down from Annapurna Base Camp when I spotted a pair of tie-dyed pants hanging from the side of a porters basket. I know those pants, I thought. Floyd propped himself up on his arms and smiled.

"Hey John."

"What are you doing in there?" Floyd's legs, arms and head were visible, but his body was masked by bamboo. I noticed he'd added a nose ring to his fashionable attire.

"I broke my ankle climbing over an avalanche field. They're porting me out of here."

"Who is?"

"That guy over there." He pointed to a Nepalese porter and my heart went out to him.

"How much do you weigh?"

"Not much now. I've been sick as a dog up here."

How Floyd could smile through all this was beyond me. "Ok, Floyd, what else?"

"What do you mean, what else?"

"A broken ankle, stomach sickness. It hardly seems enough for a guy like you."

"No, really, that's it. Things have been going really well lately."

"Nothing else?"

"Well, I did have a close call on the way out here. I was riding on the top of a bus and stood up when I heard someone calling my name. Missed a bridge by inches."

"Really?" I held back a smile. "What were you doing on the top of a bus anyway?"

"It's cheaper on the top. I came in from Kashmir. Thirty six hours on a bus is a real drag."

"You went to Kashmir? They're in the middle of a war."

"I just stayed in the house boats. I could see the gun fighting on the hills though. It was wild. Getting out was the tough part."

I had to know. "Go on."

"It was the first time that I had to fake being sick. Traffic in this one tunnel was only going in and we needed to go out. The guy assigning the traffic directions wouldn't change it for us so we made up this story that I was really sick and needed to see a doctor." He paused. Getting sick was certainly something Floyd knew plenty about.

"Yeah, and then?"

"So the traffic guys says, no problem, we have an army doctor up the hill. Come with me."

"And?"

"And I went. What else could I do. The doc checked me over. I told him where it hurt and he gave me these pills."

"You didn't did you."

"Yeah, of course I did. We wanted to make this look believable. Anyway, I told him the medicine wasn't helping and I needed to get through the tunnel to see my own doctor."

"Did they open the tunnel?"

"Yeah, but not for me. Some other guy needed to get through too, so when they opened it for him, we went too."

"You're unbelievable Floyd."

The Nepalese porter had headed over to us and began pulling the bamboo strap over his forehead.

"Looks like I gotta go," Floyd said. "See ya around huh?"

For the rest of that day, while I hiked across the Himalayas hills, I thought of Poor Floyd. I did have to hand it to him. He was certainly having one adventure after another, not the kind I would opt for, but none the less. When I reached Chhomrong I dropped my pack and called it quits for the day. No doubt Floyd would be back in the city before I was. Who knew when I'd hear about him again.

Well, rather soon as it turned out. I entered the Moon View Lodge dining room in the middle of a story.

"Me and this guy I met on the plane were staying at the Bed Bug Motel in Bombay. We were both wasted from the flight, so when these guys in the lobby asked us if we wanted to be in a B-movie we said sure. Bollywood movie stars our first night in the country. They dressed us up in these pink pajamas and had us doing dance moves from Saturday Night Fever. The guy I was with was amazing. He'd just gotten over some weird disease from drinking some river water and he was shaking like a leaf. I couldn't tell if it was after effects or some new dance moves he was making up. The director loved it."

Something about his story seemed to fit someone I knew. "That friend's name wouldn't happen to be Floyd would it?"

"Yeah, Floyd. You know him?"

"I've heard of him."

"He's quite a character huh?" the man went on. "He was telling me stories you wouldn't believe. He got stuck in a flooded river in Thailand and lost all the clothes on his back trying to get across it. He's lucky he's alive."

I hadn't heard that one yet. "Yeah, he's lucky."

I saw Floyd one last time before I left Nepal. I was at Pumpernickles for breakfast and there he was with his tie-dyed pants sitting at a table. His nose ring gleamed in the sun and he now had a pierced eyebrow to go with it.

"I see your having your head pierced." I said as I sat down next to him.

He touched his nose and eyebrow. "This and this" he pointed to his cheek,"and this."

"What happened to your cheek?"

"I was at one of those live sex shows in Thailand." He winced as he told me. "One of the needles they used shot through the air and stuck my cheek. I freaked out."

"You got to be kidding Floyd? You've got enough material here for quite a story," I said. "Maybe even a Bollywood movie."

"Ya heard about that huh?"

"So, where to next?" I asked.

"Home. I've had enough traveling for a while," He waved his air ticket in front of me.

"Aeroflot Airlines? You're going home via Russia?"

"I thought I'd stop off and see Moscow on the way."

The events in this story actually happened to travelers we met along the way.
To protect their identities their names have all been changed
to Floyd Preston.