Imagine, when on a cruise to Cuba, while looking for a vacant lounge chair on a crowded pool deck, I came across one of the passengers reading Solar Jihad. I wanted to remember this unexpected surprised, so I snapped this picture with my iPhone. The stranger, startled by my actions gave me a who are you, and what are you doing look. I apologized, and introduced myself, telling him I wrote the book he was reading. With that, his questioning frown turned into a welcoming smile. He then turned toward his wife, and said,
“Hey Joyce, this is the guy who wrote the book I’m reading.”
The stranger then asks me to sign the book for the friend who loaned him the book. “Phil will get a kick out of this,” he told his wife.
As I was signing the book, I asked for their friend’s last name, thinking I might know him. But his surname wasn’t familiar. And I never did learn how his friend came to buy my book.
You would think the highlight of my vacation would be the sights and sounds of Havana. But it wasn’t; it was while looking for a lounge chair on a crowded pool deck coming across a stranger from New Jersey reading Solar Jihad.