Three Things Learned Over 500ml of Beer
Denmark’s last mailbox, an island in the Bay of Bengal that’s illegal to visit and Cyndi Lauper's stint as a wrestling manager
Last year I introduced a series of posts dubbed “Three Things Learned Over Two Cups of Coffee.” Kim wisely pointed out that those two cups of coffee were being reheated 20 times due to my distraction level. Now? I’ve moved on to beer. I can slowly nurse a hazy IPA without the pesky interruption of the microwave. Plus, I can keep my beer warm in this buffalo check lumberjack coat.
Remember Show and Tell in elementary school? I loved it. I couldn’t wait to tell my classmates about the oriole’s nest I’d found or show off the Börje Salming card from my coveted NHL collection of Leafs players.
This Substack Post is my grown-up version of Show and Tell. Sometimes there are things that I want to share that don’t neatly fit anywhere else. In this edition, suitably, I want to talk about Denmark’s discontinued postal service, the world’s most isolated island community and Cyndi Lauper’s hotwalker days. You’ll see soon enough. They have an odd, natural fit with each other.
Why You Shouldn’t Look for a Mailbox in Denmark
In Denmark, the state-owned Post Nord mail service ended its collection and delivery service at the end of 2025. Private couriers still exist but a standard letter sent a private courier peaks at around six bucks! On the flip side, Canada Post is threatening to supply community mailboxes to over four million customers who still receive at-home delivery. Kim and I are counting our lucky stars that we still have a mailbox this winter. We’ve lost three since we moved here. Three mailboxes, not three letters! Snowplow 3. Mailbox 0.
When Kim and I were in Ecuador in 2021, we learned that the country’s main national postal service provider, Correos del Ecuador, had officially shut down in May 2020. We found this out after buying stamps, of course. They were still for sale without any warning or disclaimer.
However, on Floreana Island in the Galapagos, travelers can still mail items (for free) from Post Office Bay. Kim and I sent postcards via our ship’s naturalist whose husband was going to be on an outbound ship to Floreana a few weeks later. The postcard was successfully carried back to my sister in Banff, Alberta not even a month later. Kim’s sister received hers in New Hamburg, Ontario two weeks after that. The voluntary delivery of mail from Post Office Bay carries on a century-old tradition established by lonely whalers who left letters in a barrel in hopes that someone might be headed in the letter’s direction.
The Island You’re Not Allowed to Visit
Some people read tea leaves. Others trust the tell-tale lines of their palm or put faith in tarot cards. Kim and I started reading beer foam patterns for insight into our future travel destinations in the micro formations. Judith Schalansky’s Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands has been a reliable and necessary resource in our beer foam predictions (thank you, Jocey Asnong). I was surprised to not find Sentinel Island within the pages of this true treasure island style guide. There’s a no foolin’ around reason why.
The isle in the Bay of Bengal in India is illegal to visit. The government of India restricts entry to North Sentinel to protect the tribe from our big, bad world of communicable diseases and cultural exploitation. The Sentinelese would lack any immunity to something as simple as a common cold as this hunter-gatherer community is one of the world’s most isolated tribes. Of course, some dumb dumb tourist thought he should try to be the first to sneak in the back door of the isle.
The 24-year-old American reached the island (over 1,200km from mainland India) but failed to make his desired contact with the tribe. In a statement to CNN, a spokesperson for the US State Department said “we are aware of reports of the detention of a US citizen in India.” Previous encounters with the tribe have proved fatal. Hoping to convert the locals to Christianity, American missionary John Allen Chau was reportedly killed by tribespeople in 2018. Amen.
Want to read more about the worst-behaved travelers in 2025? CNN shared the highlights (lowlights, really) of an twerpy influencer who stole a baby wombat from its mother, tourists swimming in Rome’s Trevi Fountain and a climber who had to be rescued from Mount Fuji twice in the same week. Oh, and then there was the guy that broke the crystal-covered chair in Verona’s Palazzo Maffei museum when he posed for a photo. While on camera.
This is one list you don’t want to be on.
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Wrestle and Hotwalk Horses
Cyndi Lauper was inducted (finally!) into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in November 2025. She was already in my treasured hall back in the 80s and inspired many an impromptu bedroom danceathon. Which, back then, was more of an unchoreographed bounce around with Xanadu, my dog, barking to the beat.
Did you know Cyndi worked at an IHOP? Her stack of jobs included singing in a Japanese resto for a spell, working as a kennel attendant and as a racehorse hot walker at Belmont Park in the 70s. What the hell is a hotwalker? A person who cools down a sweaty horse after a workout. Who knew? Kim and I are definitely hot walkers for each other.
Our beloved hot walker rocker was also a wrestling manager to ring-blazer Wendi Richter. Cyndi led the fierce dynamo to a championship victory over Fabulous Moolah (who had held the WWF Women’s Championship title for 28 years).
The Library of Congress chose She’s So Unusual for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
Your homework: Watch the deeply moving documentary Let the Canary Sing and Cyndi’s humble pie Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame acceptance speech here.
I love mail. I’m kinda like Charlie Brown checking our mailbox for Valentines. Remember this episiode? It’s hard to imagine living somewhere without postal service or not walking to the end of our driveway to see if the flag is up on the box. I may have to erect our own version of Floreana’s Post Office Bay to continue the old timey tradition of sending a surprise hello!
Until then, you can surprise me the modern way with a comment below. Are you a Cyndi fan? Do you send postcards to friends and family? Any hotwalkers out there?
Do I send postcards to family and friends? I think you know the answer to that 😉 😉 😂
I always learn something new when I read your posts.