Brick man, where are you? Would you like a job?

Different World

Today, Sunday, Chris and I went grocery shopping. 2 PM nice normal thing to be doing on a Sunday afternoon. Chris was looking for yoghurt, I was looking for Chris (she can be elusive) - as I was searching the aisles for Chris, I noticed that there was a girl giving out free samples at the end of an aisle.... hummm I wonder what she is giving away.... Hot Pockets?... Tacos?.... Nope, BOOZE. There was a shot girl at the supermarket. It wasn't just any kind of booze either, it was Pinch (single malt Scotch) $50 bucks a bottle. SHOTS AT THE SUPERMARKET? SUNDAY? Now I am starting to understand Ricky Martin's Livin la Vida Loca.

Just so you don't think this is out of the ordinary, there is a gas station near the dock that has drink girls selling beer on Fridays as well. Strange place.

Driving in Puerto Rico...

So, life is interesting here in many, many, ways. One of my favorite things here are the drivers. Well, many people (mostly gringos) think that the typical Puerto Rican is crazy on the road - but, hey, I learned to drive in Boston - I'm not afraid of a little agressive driving... The typical PR driver is in no rush, possibly a little tipsy, and definately not a good driver.

When you sit at a light and the light turns green you are ALWAYS treated to a symphony of horn blasts. When we first got here, we thought 'hey everyone here is in a rush'.... wrong. They only typically drive 40-45 on major highways... then we thought 'hey everyone here are a bunch of A-holes'.... wrong. The consensus at this point is that EVERYONE LIKES TO MAKE AS MUCH NOISE AS POSSIBLE. This is simply the fact. For example, in the continental US you honk your horn to warn someone that they are doing something wrong or to give them a friendly F-You in traffic... Here in PR, the horn is used for the sheer joy of making noise and expressing frustration, not at others, but at situations in general. I have been sitting in a traffic jam with no end in sight, and someone will invariably honk thier horn.... what use is this you might ask (I know I did)... but then someone else will honk, and then another, and then before you can believe it, as far as you can hear HUNDREDS of car horns. I think it is still strange, but I honk too, and it feels good.

Hummm.... so the roads here are less than what you would call smooth, or even bumpy, or frankly sometimes rutted would be a nice way of putting it. Oh, and they flood. SERIOUS WATER. Enough that I have been worried that the Jeep isn't going to make it through, very deep, not good.

Let's see, why am I writing this today? Well, I got HIT today by a dummy who ran a red light and smacked the front of my car. I was not pleased to say the least, but the interesting thing was that 10 seconds after impact nearly EVERY pedestrian within 30 yards was inspecting the car to see how bad it was, offering advise, and saying what an idiot the other driver was. It was like something out of a movie. Minor damage and I sent her on her merry way to some major collision in the future unless she learns the difference between RED and GREEN.

About a month ago (right after we bought the Jeep) Chris and I had to go to Fed-Ex - well, this isn't on the right side of the moon, it is hell and gone down a swamp road around the back side of the airport on one of the lovely rutted roads... chris was driving, it was raining, and we ran right over a HUGE IGUANA. somehow we missed it with both sets of tires (I'm still not sure how)... and Chris says 'boy the rain is sure knocking off a bunch of palm fronds'.... right, it was a palm frond, silly me.

Last week I was driving, and I hit a BAT. Christ all mighty, I hit a BAT! where the hell does that happen? maybe a bird, a cat, a dog.....but a BAT?

Anyway, I haven't driven in the Virgin Islands, but they drive on the wrong side of the road... and no matter how brave my Boston training was, I'm not stupid. We take cabs.

Why 'The India Bus'?

Well, you just have to see for yourselves...

Crappy Weekend

So, when it comes to writing about the fun stuff Chris is all about it... Today she says to me 'why don't you tell everyone what a crappy weekend we had!' - GREAT. I would just love to recap our weekend of hell, actually not all bad, Chris suggested that the title be 'Friday from Hell' but I thought that an all inclusive weekend would be more accurate... so, here goes.

Friday morning started out pretty well, got up, had a shower, some nice coffee, no traffic.... then we arrived at work. Earlier in the week I had fired one of the crewmembers for refusing to listen to his boss, and he was due to go at noon time. Anyway, just after we arrived the first thing I did was to tell him that US Customs would be at the boat at 12:30 to check his baggage. I am assuming at this point that he believed me to be kidding when I fired him earlier in the week... he got a strange expression on his face (the kind where you aren't sure if someone is going to start crying, or stab you in the neck) he ended up running onboard the ship and jumping up and down and talking to the Oiler. The end resuld of thier 'confrence' was that they both came charging back to me shoulder to shoulder (I am thinking... great I am going to get stabbed in the neck!).... but that didn't happen, the Oiler quit. PERFECT. Just the wake up I was hoping for!

10 minutes later the Oiler came into the office and started begging to have his job back... not cool... his ticket was already purchased. It seems that he still wanted to quit, he just wanted to delay his quitting till Christmas. Yeah, like that was going to happen. Sionara.

About 15 minutes later the Chief Engineer came into the office and informed me that we have some oil in the coolant in the starboard main engine. That is REALLY bad.... and what I know about engines could write a two page book. He said that when the engine is idling the temp goes high and the oil pressure goes low..... end result is that we spent all weekend trying to figure out what the hell the problem is and haven't yet discovered the answer..... maybe it is just a bad temperature gauge. Frustrating and it is not adding to my comfort and ease of falling asleep.

Hummm... Oh, of course, about a half an hour later our tennants call and tell us that the basement is flooding and that it is coming out of the boiler. fun is, right. so, I am in Puerto Rico, the house is in Connecticut... it isn't like I have friggin yellow pages here. thank god for the internet.... I called every plumber that I could find, and the only one that could go to the house right away was - I am totally serious here - Shady Plumbers. Great, so our house is flooding and our fate is being controlled by Shady Plumbers. I was not happy. At all. Really. About two hours go by, and Shady Plumbing calls and say that I need a new boiler. yeah right, fix the pipes. Still 800 bucks. argh.

So, by now it is 12:30 and Customs is late to check the now the two geniuses bags..... and they are in danger of missing their flight home to their very pleased wives in the DR. We had to make a bunch of calls and Desiree had to scream a bit in spanish, but we finally got someone here. Really nice guy acutally, and he did both the Customs check and the Immigration paperwork (which was a silver lining that saved at least 30 minutes)...so, when he was done, the two geniuses told him I was a 'hombre mal' or BAD MAN for you who don't speekedy spanish and tried to leave the premisis without me (a major violation of thier visas) My friend the CBP officer explained it very clearly to them with many explitaves that they aren't to mess around in the good ole USA, or they'd go directly to jail, lose their visas, and get a one way ticket home with no hope for a return. That was sort of fun to watch. I wish I could spell Schaudenfreude.

Anyway, they are home now, with their (I am very sure) happy wives.

Tuesday of next week is a US Federal Holiday (Veteran's Day) We requested, and were approved to pay them overtime all day to work our ship so that we could dispatch cargo.... It was just after all of our fun with the two Geniuses that Customs called and said that they weren't going to be open for us OT or not. Great. So, we spent all the rest of the day calling customers telling them that we wouldn't be able to dispatch promised cargo on tuesday. GEE that is just my favorite thing to do, tell customers no. LOVE IT.

To add salt to my Fine Friday, Saturday started with a USCG surprise Port State Inspection. Of course, the Captain happened to be absentee. Not much fun. the nice surprise was actually no findings, which was a big relief.


HUMMM.... so, this isn't really a horrible thing for us, but a horrible thing none the less, one of the other vessels that we share the pier with had the Chief Officer pass away today (Sunday now) on their way back from Anguilla.

Hopefully next week will be better...! Hell after this weekend, I think getting stabbed in the neck would be an upturn of events.

Birdie, the landlubber...

So, as we are all well aware, Birdie the cat is now like a hundred years old in people years. She's completely out to lunch, and has gone through two or possibly three near-death episodes in the past eleven months, the most recent of which was just a few weeks ago. Anyway, when it became clear she was going to pull through after this last one, we decided to take her to the vet and see if we could figure out what was wrong with the cat (other than just being really, really old). Long story short - the vet poked and prodded her six ways to Sunday, and came up with nothing. But, just to be safe, he hit her with a nice shot of antibiotics and sent us home with an additional ten days' worth of pills. So...we had no choice but to take her with us this week. Unfortunately, in addition to getting carsick, poor Birdie now apparently gets seasick as well, as she threw up no less than three times Sunday night on our way to St. Thomas. (So much for that dose of antibiotics.) AND, when we introduced her to the guys, one of them told us that growing up in Santo Domingo they used to EAT kittens as they tasted like chicken. Great. Anyway, the upshot of this is that the cat will not be spending the rest of her days out at sea.

Here's a pic of her up on the bow when I took her out for some air Tuesday night.

Why Ian likes his job...

Who didn't want to drive bulldozers and big trucks around when they were a kid? Or, umm...32?

Hurricane Omar

Here's a few pictures of what we found in St. Croix when we got there on Saturday (the 18th) after Hurricane Omar. We were pretty impressed by the fact that our little wooden dock shack survived and the massive iron entrance gate didn't. Crazy.

Office, Sweet Office

Here's a pic of our "office" on the dock. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that's pretty much true in this instance. The nice thing about this office is that we don't pay any rent on it. Unfortunately, that's about the only nice thing about this office.

Apparently, when the trailer was moved here from the Pan Am dock several years ago, the bottom cracked. What's happening now is that the right half of the trailer is gradually sinking. So, today Ian decided to try and jack up the back corner and make the thing level again. He, Nelson, and Boxer headed out there with a forklift and some concrete blocks to try and fix it. Desiree and I decided to stay in the office and keep working. We're hearing the forklift moving around out there and thinking, ok, fine. Well, all of a sudden we feel the trailer pick up, and then there's this giant CRACK noise as the back part of the trailer apparently splits again. So we both go flying out the door yelling STOP, which turned out to be totally unnecessary as the guys were off the forklift and running around with a fire extinguisher asking Is it on fire? They're like, do you still have power? We think we pulled the damn electrical meter out of the ground! There were flames coming out of it!

So, holy crap on that one. The old guy next door (who I don't think I've ever even seen before) even came running out to see what all the commotion was about and was yelling at all of us in crazy Spanish. We got him calmed down, and the guys put some shims in and called it a day. This did seem to help a bit, although unfortunately Ian's brand new front door was now totally out of square and wouldn't close, meaning he and Nelson had to whale on it with a hammer later in the day to finally get it to close properly.

Boy, will we be happy when they move us and we get a real office.

Godzilla

This is Godzilla. He lives on the fence behind our office trailer. Occasionally (like today for instance) he likes to go out for a walk in the cargo area, which usually leads to a traffic jam.

First post - welcome!

Hello all - and welcome to our blog. We get lots of inquires as to how things are going down here, and so we thought we'd start a blog to keep everyone up to date. Also, so many crazy things seem to happen on a regular basis that it will be great to have a place to write them all down. Anyway, we're new to blogging so we can't promise anything, but we hope you enjoy nonetheless.