Kind of Cool

There is still no storm activity in the Atlantic basin. With the hurricane season down to its last six weeks, it's been unbelievably mild. Not that we're complaining.

We've had a couple of alerts. This time of year - basically June through November but mostly August and September you keep one eye always on the Atlantic, and try to keep plenty of hurricane stores on hand. We even got a small generator this year.

But so far, nothing. Nothing at all. between the wind shear coming off South America, the heavy Saharan dust and dry air, no big storms have formed up and come marauding into the Caribbean, despite the warm surface temperatures of the ocean.

But this is kind of cool (since it's about a hundred miles away. Otherwise it might be anything from worrisome to terrifying.) The volcano on Montserrat has started erupting again. This is a photo taken by the International Space Station (where they sometimes talk like pirates!) The picture is from the NASA Web site.

To help orient yourself - the ash plume is drifting west, the narrow end of the island points almost due north. Montserrat is south of St. Kitts & Nevis, and Nevis is about a hundred miles due east of us here on St. Croix - where we're still keeping an eye on the Atlantic Basin.

A 'tiring' but interesting day

The left front tire on Bertha (our '97 Nissan Pathfinder) was in a bad way. I could feel movement in the steering wheel, could see the belt peeking from the corner, knew it was coming apart.

So Thursday I dropped the family off at school, drove gingerly home and went to change it.

Peeled back the cover on the spare mounted on the back and it looked good, hardly worn at all, plenty of tread. So I pulled the cover off and got my first surprise. It would not be the last.

The spare was held on to the frame by three lug nuts – and a big, rusted padlock. I checked all the keys – we had no key for that lock. I don't recall the guy who sold us Bertha last year ever mentioning it and I hadn't checked then or since. Searched the car from top to bottom. Found some interesting thing, but no padlock key.

As fate would have it, I had to drop by Tony's Wrecking Yard that day to pay $30 I owed for something else. (Equally long, convoluted story I won't go into here.) So I gave him a call. "You don't happen to have a bolt cutter I could borrow for two minutes, do you?" Turns out he did. So that problem would soon be solved.

Drove carefully over to Tony's. about five miles. Tony's a funny guy – probably about my age, shorter and rounder than me, bald, and with a crusty exterior that makes him a little off-putting at first. The previous day I'd been there I'd had to wait and watch while he directed his crew in moving some junked cars around the lot to make room for something. It was like one of those wooden Chinese puzzles – pull this one over there, start that one, back it out, slide another past it, then put that back. Etc. Tony stood on the building harassing, shouting, raining out a torrent of colorful invective that blistered paint, but it was all somehow good natured and accepted by everyone.

But when dealing with me he was unfailingly helpful and courteous, and the strongest language he used was comically mild. When I pulled in and he saw the lock and heard that I had no key, he rolled his eyes and said, "Ho-o-o-ly matrimony!"

He had several more opportunities for that one as the day went on.

We were able to snap the lock off without trouble. The tire was just a tad soft, so I figured I'd drive to a service station, put air in it and put it on the car. But Tony said, "You want us to do that for you? We've got air and we can take care of it and get you on your way." I let myself be convinced – fortunately.

Backed the car into the service area and one of the guys had it jacked up and the tire off in no time. Meanwhile Tony himself took the spare, put air in it and ran water over it to make sure no air was bubbling out anywhere. Nope. Looked good. The guy popped it on and with six quick zips of the pneumatic wrench it was ready.

I thanked Tony, offered to pay him, he declined, I gave him the cash I had and he said, "I'll give it to the guys."

I got in, started Bertha up, put it in gear and gave it gas.

Bertha didn't move. Instead there was a horrible grinding noise, which – if I tried to transcribe it here – would be all Gs and Ns and Ks. I got out to check but it wasn't still jacked up and there was nothing blocking any of the wheels. I tried again.

More Gs and Ks.

Tony looked closely at the front end of the car, looked at me and said, "I don't think that wheel's the right size."

He was right. The tire was the same size as the others, but the wheel it was mounted on wasn't quite right. I'm not even sure how you do that.

Now what? Even if I wanted to I couldn't drive it. All I could think was to put the bad tire back on and go down to the nearest tire shop and get it straightened out, as if that was something I could afford.

Tony, however, had other plans. He told me to wait, "We'll get you on the road" – and sent one of the guys out into the lot to find a Pathfinder he was pretty sure was out there. I waited maybe half an hour, and the guy (the one who told me he'd been 9 years old when Woodstock happened a couple of hundred miles from his home and he still hasn't forgiven his parents for not taking him to it) came walking through the rusted hulks with a wheel. The right sized wheel. Then they mounted my tire on the wheel, took another 20 minutes or so – and the new wheel was zapped onto my car. And I was good to go, and Tony wouldn't hear of me paying him for it.

Changing a tire is not rocket science. I've changed more than a few in my life and times and it rarely takes more than about 15 minutes. This had taken about three hours starting from when I'd decided to do it. But I've never been happier about a tire change.

Later I was doing some other chores and mentioned something to the cashier about "the way my day's been going." She commiserated about "the bad day" she assumed I was having.

Not a bad day, I replied. It was certainly an interesting day, and it could have been a very bad one, but it wasn't. Tony is a helluva guy and his crew are really something and they made all the difference.

And I've learned another valuable lesson:

Just because the car you're buying has a spare tire attached to it doesn't mean that the spare actually goes to your car. Check it out.

And go to Tony's.

Celebration - Part 2

Okay, so apparently I was wrong about how long it would take me to post the next part of the anniversary adventure. Not the next day, but two weeks later.

What can I say, we got very busy. It was, after all, the two weeks leading up to Talk Like a Pirate Day. Which I will discuss in a later post. How much later? Excellent question.

So when last I wrote, the power was out, the rain was pouring down, the room was leaking a little. Time for dinner! The restaurant was supposed to open at 6, but we didn't see how it could without electricity. But no, the woman at the front desk told us it was open. They must have a generator.

The restaurant at Sand Castle is an open air affair, and given the really remarkable rain it was hard to see how that was going to work. There was one small area near the bar under cover, and about nine, ten people were crowded in underneath the canopy at the few little tables. We pulled the last table out of the rain right next to another and sat down.

And that's how we met Larry and Chris. They were a couple vacationing from Nashville. The arrangements made it all very cozy, and when Chris moved around to the other side so he could smoke without bothering Larry, we were all basically having dinner together.

And that was fine. These were two funny, funny guys. Larry does something in banking – he explained it but I couldn't follow it exactly. Chris is in oncology. I have no idea if he is a doctor, a nurse or some kind of technician, but he had some stories. I also found it interesting that he smokes. Just seemed odd.

Anyway, they'd been on island about a week, and Larry couldn't wait to move there. Chris seemed more cautious, but everything was funny the way they told it. They asked – and we tried to give – some of our impressions about island living, being transplanted here and making our way in this life that is both similar and foreign to stateside living. But wherever a conversational gambit started it became another joke, or another funny story.

We learned a lot about their lives and families. We learned about their cat and their home and their pool, saw their family photos. We hadn't brought any with us, the house was only half mile away and we hadn't really thought we'd end up sharing time with anyone but ourselves. Still, it was a pleasant dinner. Lot of laughing.

At some point – roughly about the time the waitress brought our prime ribs – the rain stopped. About the time we were asked about dessert, the power came back on. There was general applause.

The cook had something new, an incredibly chocolatey thing served in a martini glass – not pudding but much thicker than mousse, almost like one of those cans of frosting, eaten directly from the can. Tori ordered that (and Larry insisted on paying for it as an anniversary present.) I had a brownie with coffee ice cream and chocolate sauce - way too much for my stomach but not nearly as rich as Tori's dessert. I tried hers of course, and I've never had chocolate that burned. I'm telling you, the spoonful I had left a burning chocolate aftertaste that lingered for several minutes before I cooled it down with my own dessert.

Larry and Chris just fell in love with Tori – pretty much everyone does – and when we paid the check we realized we'd been there for three hours. We went back to our room, where I recited the little bit of poetry I could recall – NOT including "The Cremation of Sam Magee." Our book of poetry is still in storage in Oregon.

It wasn't easy to check out the next day. We'd had a nice time, alone with no kids or phone or anything. Just us. And now the sun was out and there was the beach. Oh well, that's the nice thing about living here. The beach is ALWAYS there. But we had to admit we were a little worried bout the family – they'd been without power too – so we loaded up our one small bag and drove home.

It had been a nice getaway, and we'll be doing some more of those soon, I think. In the meantime, I'm going to finish with the sonnet that I always recite to her every year on Sept. 5 – the most important day in my life.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediment. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Ah, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on storms and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with its brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be folly, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

An Explosive Celebration

Last Saturday was the 20th anniversary of the best day of my life – the day I married Tori.

In Oregon we always spent our anniversary sitting under the same tree, one we'd carved our initials in, and read poetry while sipping wine and eating bread. Now, partly we did that every year because it was romantic, and because our schedules were so hectic. Sometimes we'd have no more than a half hour or so before one of us, or one of the kids, had to be somewhere. But I have to admit, part of it was that we were kind of broke when we first got married. This was both romantic and inexpensive.

But I always thought Tori deserved a better anniversary than that, and when the city of Albany cut down that tree a couple of years ao, we knew it was time to go.

We're hardly rich now, seriously that's just laughable. But this year we were able to do a little better. (Tori got a great new job. I'll let her tell you about that another time.) I thought it would be nice this year to have some time for us, without having to worry about the kids or the schedule, making dinner or anything like that. So, without telling Tori, I made a reservation for a room at Sand Castles on the Beach, a resort not more half a mile from here, right on our favorite stretch of beach. We'd be right at hand if anything went wrong at home, but we'd be alone. We'd walk on the beach, maybe swim, maybe use the resort's pool. Not worry about anyone but us. We didn't bring the cell phone, didn't bring the laptop. We'd have a sort of island getaway vacation without actually going anywhere.

The weather was dicey that day, cloudy all day with some light sprinkles. Mind you, this was the day after what was left of Tropical Storm Erika had already passed by, and there was nothing on the weather horizon. But instead of sun, we got clouds, gray skies and a little rain.

No problem, I was sure we'd find something to do indoors. And we did.

The room was nice, a suite actually, with a living room, bedroom and small kitchen off the patio. The patio was covered, so even a little rain wouldn't be a problem.

But a little rain was not what we got. After we'd been there a couple of hours we were, sitting in the living room, resting and watching the Notre Dame game (Go Irish!) when there was a flash of light outside. Then a boom. Then more light. Then the roar of rain.

Understand that when we get rain here it's usually brief. Even when it's intense, it's rarely as long as 15 minutes. But this was amazing, a downpour like we haven't seen since Hurricane Omar. Lightning and thunder right on top of us – literally. There'd be the flash and the boom almost simultaneously, which means it's close. And the rain pouring down.

That's when we discovered the kitchen window couldn't be closed. There was a screen, but no glass. It shouldn't have been a problem since the window was perpendicular to the open end of the covered patio, where the rain was coming from. In a typical cloudburst, not even an issue.

But this rain was coming down so hard for so long and blowing so hard that it flooded the kitchen, water pooling up on the floor. We had to run down to the desk and get a lot more towels.

The rain, the thunder, the lightning. It was spectacular. Naturally, the power went out, so we never did see the end of the game (which Notre Dame won, we found out later, 35-0.) And it went on more than two hours. I mean, this was a storm like I hadn't seen here without a hurricane warning attached to it.

Dramatic doesn't begin to describe it. It as an amazing experience, and a spectacular backdrop for our anniversary. And it wasn't the last amazing experience we'd have that weekend.

But we'll tell the rest of the story tomorrow.

Weather Watch

Last week we had our eye on Erika. It was kind of funny, the hurricane reporting sites we monitor had all been predicting that system would turn into something potentially serious, and as the week wore on they all sounded really annoyed that it wasn't. It's like they were blaming Erika. By the time Erika rolled through the Caribbean it had pretty much dissipated into nothing. Ironically, it was the day after what was left of Erika rolled through that we got quite a bit of rain with some pretty cool lightning and thunder.

Now Fred has formed up off the African coast and is lumbering across the Atlantic at 13 miles an hour. Unlike Erika, Fred has gone from tropical wave to depression to storm to hurricane very quickly, and is continuing to build up steam. But, as is often the case, when a storm builds up a lot of strength early, the rotation causes it to veer north. Also, there's plenty of wind shear blowing from the southwest, which tends to break up storms, and dry air and Saharan dust. So right now we're cautious, but not worried.

Sure enough, all the computer models and tracking maps show Fred heading almost due north, where it will rage out without ever seeing land. So that's a good thing.

Of course you can never be sure. These storms sometimes have a mind of their own. So you keep prepared, with a supply of food and water and flashlights and candles and plenty of books. And you hold your breath until the end of the hurricane season, Nov. 30.

Island Living

Max couldn't get the game cartridge into his Nintendo DS this morning. We tried shoving it in, vigorously, but it wouldn't catch.

Tori – who is both smarter than me and has significantly better eyesight than me – peered into the slot. A tiny – barely an inch long - lizard had crawled in, and when we shoved in the cartridge we'd impaled it on the prongs.

We have written Nintendo customer support (I think this will be a first for them) seeking advice on how to extract the former lizard in a relatively non-gooey and less disgusting way and how to clean lizard entrails off the contacts. I suspect we may have to wait a few days for it to mummify a bit, and perhaps pick up some barf bags.

Because, Damn!

Chicken in a Hole- Not a Recipe

A Caribbean math problem:

How do you get a baby chick out of a three-feet deep, two-inch wide fence post hole?

That's the dilemma we faced recently when a newborn chick fell into a hole in our yard and proceeded to cheep, cheep, cheep for dear life.

My daughter Alex heard it first. As this is St. Croix, chickens roam freely everywhere. That is one thing that surprised me most about living here. Chickens. Everywhere. In the streets, in yards, on the beach, in the cities, behind businesses, in front of businesses, even in the trees. Yes, chickens have been spotted in the trees. I am reminded of a jaunty, animated Sesame Street ditty:

"There are chickens in the trees,
Chickens in the trees..."

At the end of the animated song a small voice proclaims ' silly man, chickens do not climb trees.'

Yes they do. Virgin Island chickens climb trees, poles, roofs, fences, cars, small children, large children and horses.

And while Virgin Island chickens climb trees, poles, roofs, fences, cars, small children, large children and horses, they also fall into holes.

All year long mother hens strut around with baby chicks in tow. Sometimes the hens will have a dozen babies following them around, pecking and scraping their tiny little feet at the ground looking for bugs. But it is a good thing they have a lot of babies, as chickens have no natural defenses and there are a lot of predators: Cats, mongoose, (or is it mongeese? Mongooses? Mongi?) cars, the weather, young Crucian boys who have to bring dinner home or face the wrath of mother, and the big damn Rottweiler next door who has used chickens as chew toys on more than one occasion, and three-feet deep, two-inch wide fence post poles that have been cut off at the base and left as a trap for poor little chicks to fall into.

When Alex heard the sound of a muffled chick squealing, she had to investigate and soon found that a chick had, indeed, fallen and could not get out. This little guy was jammed in. He was small enough to fall all the way to the bottom, but tight enough that we couldn't get anything under him to lift him without crushing his fragile body. We couldn't dig him out as the pole was set in concrete. We tried a curved stick, a coat hanger, two sticks used as chopsticks, a rope on a stick, a rope on two sticks, but to no avail. We even talked of flooding him out with the garden hose, but rejected that idea, as despite being Monty Python fans, we didn't really know if the chick would float. (And if it didn't float, it'd be a witch and we'd have to burn it. Too much trouble. Better not to know.)

We were frustrated in our failed attempts to save this poor baby chick. We couldn't think. It seemed hopeless, the chicks cries were slowing down. He'd been in the hole for an hour or more and we nearly gave him up as a casualty to the bitch of nature, when suddenly, along came a spider.

We had a flashlight beam shining down the hole on the chick and suddenly, the light picked up a curious glare on top of the chicks head. Two curious pinpricks of light, only it wasn't exactly pinpricks of light, it was more like pea-sized, giant pea-sized points of light reflected back to us at the top of the hole. And dear, sweet, God, I can't describe how freaked out we were to realize that a huge, giant, enormous spider had crawled on top of the baby chicks head. I kid you not, a big damn spider was covering the baby chick's head. Bad to worse.

There is nothing like a super creepy arachnid with glowing eyes perched on top of an innocent, fluffy, chick to inspire some creativity! The stakes had immediately gone up. Now we weren't just facing an unsolvable dilemma of nature, we were the good guys battling evil. If we failed, then all of mankind would fall into the darkest depths of chaos. The forces of evil would win. The spiders would win. But oh! How terribly creepy it was. I am not generally afraid of spiders, but this scene made me feel sick to my stomach. My creep-o-meter was on full tilt. What to do? What to do? We just knew Shelob was waiting for us to go away so he could inject his venom, wrap his victim in silk and claim his prize, his precious.

We had to defeat the spider.

Our sticks prodded the hole with a new fervor. We'd poke the spider, he'd fight back, lifting his legs up to ward off our wooden swords. We prodded, Shelob rallied, we screamed feeling particularly oogie. Finally, my husband John joined Alex and I in battle, and when he thrust his stick, er, sword at the venomous monster, it fought back aggressively, raced up the shaft of the stick and out into the open, but before it could attack, John hurled the minion of Sauron into the street and crushed him, stomped him again and again under his mighty Rockport tennis shoes.

Our hearts were racing! We triumphed over evil! If only we could save our symbol of hope and purity!

Damn it! We are Theater People. Surely we can think of something. And out came the duct tape. Within minutes of defeating the spider, Alex had rigged a long stick with a wad of inside out duct tape. She fished into the hole, gently, gently, gently and suddenly, hopefully, felt the chick stick to the tape. She lifted him up, slowly, slowly, carefully. We held our breaths. Stuck to the end of a stick in a wad of duct tape was our baby chick.

Elation! Shrieks of joy!

We had to unstick him from the duct tape, and the little guy lost some bits of fluff on his back, but he was alive and intact. Nothing broken, no spider bites. We raced the chick to the back yard where his mother was pecking and scratching at the ground with about a half a dozen babies all around. We set him down and watched this adorable, innocent symbol of Easter, run towards the hen and the other chicks cheep, cheep, cheeping all the way.

We spent the next ten minutes gathering small stones and with a last burst of heroic adrenaline, we filled in the three-feet deep, two-inch wide fence-post hole and capped it off with a coconut shell. We sealed the slippery gates of hell.

The lucky little chick cheated death. Today. Tomorrow? That's a different story. I can report that I have seen the chick with the bald spot pecking and scratching and chirping days after his big ordeal. So the answer to the math problem, how do you get a baby chick out of a three-feet deep, two-inch wide fence post hole is easy: duct tape and a stick. Of course, the motivational spider is optional.