Journey to South Africa – Day 6, November 18 – Plettenberg Bay

Today’s our third day at Fynbos and Nick spends most of the day wrapping up his solo, and second, book on mountaineering titled, K I I.

It’s been a busy year.  In addition to writing books, Nick and I have also been making a series of videos for YouTube called Interrogating Oscar.  These videos are homemade, raw snapshots of our lives as we research and write about Oscar Pistorius.   Some episodes are strictly about the murder and the trial, while others are much more personal, providing insight into our own trials and tribulations as we grow both personally and professionally throughout this process.

One of our longer term goals is to make professionally produced documentaries to complement our books.  Why?  Well, it’s never been about getting rich.  Trust me, if it were, we’d be failing. Of course, we want to be successful and with that eventually comes money.  We’re no different than anybody else working hard at a career and wanting to reap the benefits.  One of the primary reasons for documentaries is we want a larger platform from which we can reach more people.  Also, as much as we love writing, we’re not limited to that as far as our interests are concerned.  We also love bringing stories to life in visuals.  Nick’s a photographer, I’m a blogger, and we’re both movie junkies.  I also enjoy narration and have become pretty decent at it over the last year.  Add all of that together, and our desire to have our stories on the bigger screen makes sense.

Because this work is so personal to us, Nick and I have an unofficial pact to honor what we’ve built by finding the right partners who understand us and our vision.  The ride to get there, let’s just say, has been… interesting.  We’ve definitely met some doozies.

One of my favorites [insert eyeroll] from early on was an executive from New York and I had the pleasure of being his primary contact. The first time I talked to him on the phone he confessed he was several sakes in and not exactly mentally clear.  He also told me, in glorious detail, about his last failed relationship and their sexual escapades.   This guy’s masterful use of the word fuck made me seem like a girl scout, which for those who know me, is a stretch.  I gotta admit, he was amusing for a bit.  But cooler heads prevailed and we soon parted ways with the Charlie Sheen wannabe.

I won’t tell you about all the others in between, but the latest potential executive is a guy from South Africa.  We’ve been communicating back and forth with him for the better part of two weeks.  Initially, the proposal seemed interesting but needed some negotiating.  After a few go arounds, we realized, he was trying to get us to agree to much more than we were comfortable with.  So, today we told him no thanks but neither one of us is particularly crushed.  Now that we’ve been around this block a few times, I think we understand how this process works and we’re prepared to keep at it for the long haul.

Later in the day, as Nick’s napping, I treat myself to a bubble bath and some much needed pampering.

That pampering comes to an abrupt halt when I step into the bedroom, then stop dead in my tracks.  There’s a spider the size of my hand up near the ceiling.  I can’t believe my eyes; I’m literally frozen in horror.  I’ve never seen anything that freaking huge before.  I absolutely despise spiders and this is the King Kong of all spiders [at least until the others I saw later on the trip.]

There’s no way in hell I can get this thing off the wall without having a heart attack.  There’s only one option – Nick has to get his ass up.  I go into the living room and make just enough noise to get him stirring.  As soon as he does, I tell him about the spider and beg him to kill it.  Kill it, kill it now, don’t let it get away!!!  In the typical annoyed male fashion, he gets up and grumbles while he looks for the broom.  Unlike me, Nick’s not a serial killer of spiders.  He pardons them and sets them free in the wild.  Unhappily accepting that the spider will live, I helpfully suggest that he fling it as far as he can over the other side of the mountain.

Once the monster is out of the house, and I shake off the heebie jeebies, we light a fire and watch Dumb and Dumber on TV.  Yes, Pistorians, that’s right, Nick and I watched Dumb & Dumber.  I’ll patiently await your charming comments on this post.

Tomorrow I’ll edit Nick’s latest writing and get it uploaded to Amazon… and then the road trip continues…