Fog Theory

On the morning of New Year’s Eve, I met an old friend at Riverbend Park in Jupiter for a bike ride. We used to run 10K’s until our knees gave out and switched to biking. He lives part of the year in Pennsylvania and comes back to Florida in the winter. This was the second time we’d taken a ride since he’d returned.

His name is Rob, like mine, but we call each other Tacayo. A synchronicity behind that name. Back in the late 1980s when Trish and I were leading adventure tours to Latin America, Rob came along as a Scuba diving guide on a trip to San Andres Island. We were in a taxi together heading through the main town when the taxi driver slowed and yelled out, “Tacayo!”  to a guy standing on a corner. Then he said to us that was his friend, Roberto.

I asked why he called him tacayo and he explained that tacayo means namesake–they both were name Roberto. Same with Rob and I. From that day on we called each other Tacayo. The actual Spanish spelling is Tocayo, but for us it has always been Tacayo.

When we meet around the holidays, I usually give Tacayo one of my books that he hasn’t read. So on this occasion I grabbed an extra copy of Beyond the Bermuda Triangle, which I wrote with Bruce Gernon and focuses on his theory of “electronic fog.” I decided to also bring along a bottle of wine, since Rob is very generous with gifts of a smoking product from time to time. So I pulled a bottle off our wine rack and was surprised to see that the red blend was called…Fog Theory. Wow! Never heard of that wine, but very appropriate for the moment. A Bermuda Triangle synchronicity!