Finally Fulfilling Two Old Promises

Warning! This story will not make much sense to many readers, so I understand if you don't get it. I need to do this to finally fulfill a couple of promises I made to 3 wonderful people I met online while playing Pirates of the Caribbean, which Disney just decided to stop because, I guess, they didn't like the money it was returning. Damn all the people playing it. We had about 700 in our clan or group. I don't remember what term they used in the game. 

I made the promise 11 years ago.

Frankly, one good thing is that both Gemini and Canva made writing the story a lot easier than it would have been back then.

I finally got it together after a chat with a new friend I made at my favourite bar, The Wort and his name will be Grasshopper in the story. Basically, he said I just have to let it go, and that is what this story is helping make happen.

So, the four of us in the game, we will call "The 4 Amigos," had so much fun chatting in what was a really marvellous social game for its time and had numerous conversations with all kinds of people all over the world. Disney somehow didn't think it was worth keeping after they bought the company that ran the game. I don't buy anything with Disney on it now.

I somehow managed to get into telephone conversations with the 4th Amigo, we will call Angel, who lived in Alabama. Her accent was so thick that the first time we talked on the phone, I could not understand a single word she said, me being from Southern Canada and all. We eventually worked that out and chatted on the phone and/or in the game every night for about 6 months.

Then, after a chat that was just "loll," she disappeared, and the Facebook notice of her upcoming funeral just took the life out of me. (I have to stop here for a bit. It's hard to write through a wall of tears)

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OK, I'm back to finish this long story of the 4 Amigos.

I forgot to mention that the 4 Amigos showed up in Battle Pirates trying to find a suitable replacement for the POTC game, and that didn't last long. Eventually, I was just playing it on my own as the other 2 Amigos went on with their lives as a couple living in Fort St. John, BC.

The 2 Amigos had this thing where they travelled together, and one particular trip the same year Angel disappeared forever was amazing when you really look at it. They drove from BC to Newfoundland (they are both originally from the Maritimes), then back through Toronto, and did a minimum 4-hour side trip to visit me unexpectedly in London, Ontario.

Normally, I would be really excited about visitors bearing gifts of freshly caught haddock and lobster, and I'd respond to their desire to see me write about their magical adventure across Canada and back. My response was along the lines of: Angel was my inspiration, and I will get to writing your story soon, I promise.

Well, 11 years later, it is finally happening.

Gemini and Canva made this a lot easier than writing it all out. The 2 Amigos trip across Canada was such an adventure that the equivalent in the USA would be driving from NYC to Los Angeles, then back to NYC and then driving all the way down to Miami, Florida.

The equivalent in Europe would be more like starting in Moscow, then driving to Lisbon, Portugal and back to Moscow and then to Lisbon once more. The Canva graphic does a pretty good job of showing that, with some help from AI for the map, but I had to reposition the dots because AI got it close but not accurate. AI also wasted a lot of space in the background map where a human would have immediately removed the northern oceans and anything below the Tropic of Cancer.

So the 2 Amigos have had lots of other trips over the years using air travel now, which I'd think is a little faster lol. The latest is one to Carlsbad, California, where they took some amazing photos with probably a cellphone, no less, posted on their Facebook account. I "borrowed" one for my new business because it was so amazing and works really well with the $tarving @rtist Program that will be part of that business.

I hope they are OK with me doing that, and they will be the first to receive this post anyway.

So, this is 10 and a half years later (after doing a little more research) on how Google Meet works. I hope to get hold of the other 2 Amigos and get reacquainted. I'm sure we will talk about the 4th Amigo, how she filled out the group, and how her passing was probably the main reason we dissolved.

I wrote a song entitled "Fly High Sweet Girl" about Southern Angel back in 2015 and will finally put it together in the form of a video with stills so you can attach the .wav file and hear the song, which is how it gets done today and doesn't require a dedicated program to run the file. Programs like Facebook and Blogger allow you to paste videos but not .wav files, so that is the workaround everyone uses now. (Thank you, Gemini, for that help. AI can be very useful if you know how to ask it for help and not expect it to create something unique on its own. AI is basically dumb and needs a human to prompt it with the right questions to get anything useful back.)

Angel, in one of our last conversations, said, "Y'all gotta keep awritin ', "(Southerners made up a lot of new words out of more than one, it seems)

Well, Bandit, "I'm a doin'it" just like you wanted. Fly High Sweet Girl (Here come those tears again; a so-so song by Jackson Browne. I think Fly High Sweet Girl will be better because it's hard for me to get through the whole song, but just like Vince Gill's "Go Rest High on That Mountain," it provides comfort. Vince had a tough time singing it at George Jones's funeral, so I understand that. Man, I wish I could sing and play the guitar like Vince. He is indeed super talented.)

It took two days to write this. Normally, I finish a post like this in an hour or two. This one was a little more draining than most and really helped the healing process.

Y'all have a wunnerful day, eh. (Signed, your Canook friend. She knows what I mean).

Here's a taste of what will be used in the video for Fly High Sweet Girl the song. Canva makes this all possible. It's very short so hit the k-key on you keyboard to pause it.