E7: Lobster Bob and the Count

Lobster Bob and the Count
Lobster Bob's Scenic Tours | Lobster Bob's Logbook

NARRATOR: Somewhere on Earth, a volcano is smoking. A market smells of a hundred spices. A little plane is climbing higher than the clouds. You can see it. You can learn about it. Every place is real... and it is all out there. Lobster Bob has been everywhere. Now he is taking you. Passport ready?

NARRATOR: Sunday. The one day Lobster Bob is not flying, sailing, or driving anywhere. He is somewhere small, noticing something he did not expect to notice. The logbook is open. Here is the entry.

NARRATOR: Hernán's shop, La Candelaria, Caracas. Warm. Glue and coffee. The new one is dark red.

LOBSTER BOB: Hola Mijo! Lobster Bob here.

LOBSTER BOB: The logbook is open on my knee, and this is the entry, just as I wrote it.

LOBSTER BOB: I am at Hernán's shop in Caracas. Hernán is the man who makes the covers for my logbooks. His shop has been on this corner since before I was born. Hernán binds the books. That means he stitches the pages together, by hand, and puts them inside a cover made of real leather. Hernán does not say very much. He does not need to. His work says it for him.

LOBSTER BOB: The shop smells of glue and old paper and the coffee on the hot plate at the back. The coffee is for him. He gives me some anyway. He does not ask if I want sugar. He brings me the coffee he drinks. I am still learning what kind of respect that is.

LOBSTER BOB: Today he is binding my next logbook. The leather is dark red. I asked him why red. He said: red leather lasts. Green fades. That is the leather. Not my opinion. Then he went back to sewing. The radio was off. The radio is never on while he sews. Sewing is for counting.

LOBSTER BOB: While he sewed, I tried to work out how many books he has made for me. I decided it was about twenty. I said so, out loud, to the shop in general.

LOBSTER BOB: Hernán put down the needle. He walked to the shelf at the back. He came back with a small notebook of his own, and he opened it, and he did not read for long, because he knew where to look.

LOBSTER BOB: Sixty-eight. He has bound sixty-eight books for me. Every one is written down. The day I brought it in. The day I collected it. The colour of the leather, every time. I asked him why he keeps the count. He shrugged. He said: it is my shop. The count is mine.

LOBSTER BOB: I have carried those books across six continents. He has carried the number. I did not have the number. He had the number. This tells you which of us is the more serious man.

LOBSTER BOB: The new book is on his bench now, dark red, waiting for me to come back tomorrow. I do not know what I will write in it. I know who will know.

NARRATOR: Lobster Bob noticed that someone had been keeping his count all along, quietly, in a notebook of their own. What did you notice this week that you did not expect to notice?

NARRATOR: Your own logbook starts tonight, keepers of the record. One line before bed, or one drawing, is a whole entry. Your logbook page is in the explorer pack, next to your passport, at lobster bobs podcast dot com.

NARRATOR: Lobster Bob has been everywhere. Now he is taking you.

LOBSTER BOB: You are the missing passenger, mijo. Passport ready? The world is not going to wait forever.