A Critical Decision on a Very Rainy Day

So the other day it was POURING rain here, so much so that our patio was flooding and because none of the doors here actually seal at the bottom (thank you Vieques construction) water was running into the house. 9 towels later and that problem was solved.

On to the real topic. As I said it was pouring, however it didnt start pouring until about 8:30am which is right about the time I dropped Steve off at work. I followed my normal morning ritual, park at the W to drop Steve off, go in to the coffee bar and get my morning coffee, take a stroll around the property and go home. So while I'm in the coffee bar it starts coming down in sheets, fortunately I had brought my lightweight rain jacket knowing that it was supposed to rain. Grab my coffee and make a run for it to the car and manage to get there without getting too wet. For those of you following this blog you remember what my jeep looks like, no back window. Well this isn't too big of a problem for the rain because I don't care if the back of the jeep gets wet, however its a HUGE problem for the mosquitoes which all apparently decided to take shelter in my Jeep when it started to rain. I get into the car and they are literally swarming! The only way to get rid of them when that happens is to put the windows down and drive so the wind blows them out which is obviously problematic when its pouring rain. At this point I had to make a critical decision.....drive with the swarm in the car feasting on me all the way home or put the window down and get soaked but not bitten.....Definitely drive with the window down, I can dry off but I cant make bites go away.

I know this may not sound too terrible, a little rain never hurt anyone, but again for those of you that have seen the Jeep it has pretty large off-road tires on it that stick out the side just enough that when you drive through a puddle, water gets kicked up right to the side of the jeep since the fenders are not wide enough to catch it. So imagine driving with the window down, water coming in from the rain and water and mud and I dont even want to think about what else, coming in at a rather high velocity, aimed right at my face, from the tires. As if getting soaked and mudded (yes I made that word up) wasn't bad enough, I had numerous people pointing and laughing as I drove through town wondering what the hell that Gringo girl was doing.  Im not going to lie, if I was in their shoes I would be laughing too, but its never fun being the one that gets laughed at.

So by the time I got home not only was I drenched, I was covered in a considerable amount of mud, but I didnt get a single mosquito bite, SUCCESS! I hopped in the shower, threw my clothes in the wash and went about my day as if it had never happened. No need for Benadryl cream today.

Have a Happy New Year!

The Jeep is Finally Here....Almost all of it!

So Im sure many of you saw my new red Jeep on Facebook the day I purchased it, it looked something like 

this......

Nice new shiny Jeep with a brand new tan soft top, perfect for the Caribbean! What some of you may not know is that the day I bought the Jeep I gave the dealer a wad of cash to buy the Jeep and then left it there to get shipped off to Puerto Rico thinking that the sooner I ship it the sooner I will get it. Seems logical right? Well at the time I was blindly unaware of how things work down here in Vieques. So yes, I bought the Jeep on October 14, it shipped on October 17th and it arrived on Vieques on December 20th, after apparently spending two weeks in San Juan just waiting to come over. Of course thats not the whole story, it would be Vieques if it was. After finding out that my car had been sitting in San Juan for two weeks I called the shipping company to ask when it would be delivered to Vieques to which they respond "As soon as we have a space on the ferry." The way the cargo ferry works is you have to go down to the ferry office to make an appointment for your vehicle which can take several days up to two weeks. Seeing as how my car had been sitting there for two weeks I figured that the appointment for my car must be soon.....HAHAHA! The following is how the conversation proceeded:

me: "well what day do you have an appointment for?" 

them: "well we have to send someone down to the ferry office to get an appointment" (HAHAHA......what!)

me: "You mean to tell me you have had my car sitting there for over two weeks and you haven't even gone to schedule an appointment, when exactly were you planning on doing that?"

them: "Well it would be much easier for us if you would just come over and get the car" (again...WHAT!!)

me: "To be completely honest with you Im really not too concerned about what's easiest for you since you are getting paid to deliver my car to me. I'll tell you what's most convenient for me would be not having to take an entire day to fly over to San Juan, spend $50 on a plane ticket, drive my car to the ferry and spend two hours on the ferry to get back. So how about this, since you obviously cant seem to get down to the ferry office how about I make an appointment for the ferry and you just make sure my car is on it when it leaves, is that easy enough for you?"

them: "That would be better but the ferry would have to be in the morning so our driver can get back in the afternoon"

Pretty particular for people who are making me do their job for them!

So needless to say I was able to get a ferry spot on the Monday morning ferry (our conversation was on Friday) so it clearly wasn't that tough. 

Monday morning rolls around and I cant wait for 11:30 as thats when the ferry is arriving. 11:32 the phone rings and the driver is at the dock ready to turn over the car....whooo hooo finally! We drive down to the dock to meet the driver and this is what I see.....

I made the picture extra large for you so you can see in detail how shredded the back window of the jeep  is, NICE! So now I need to get a whole new top since the seam and fabric is even ripped at the top edge. The good news, I look more like a local than I could have ever hoped for. The bad news, since there is no way to seal up the car every time I go to get in it the mosquitoes have taken up residence and are swarming all over. First day in the car I ended up with about 17 bites and that's after I doused myself in repellent. 

Welcome to Vieques little red Jeep!

Catch Up!

Ok so I know I have not been very diligent about updating this blog so I am going to try a little harder. They may not be long or super entertaining blogs but I am going to try to post something at least 2 or 3 times a week. For now I'm going to catch you up on the events of the last couple of weeks at warp speed.

November 24-30

Steve and I went to Cozumel for his Ironman race. It was a bit of a whirlwind trip and really I felt like I was still in Puerto Rico since it took planes, ferries and automobiles for us to get there. We had the misfortune of staying at the Wyndham in Cozumel which was terrible in every way except the friendly staff. The food was awful in taste and nutrition, all of the restaurants had very specific times that they were open and the times were a little strange and worst of all they had NO ROOM SERVICE for breakfast! Seriously, what other meal do people get room service for? In addition to the dreadful food was the "water saving" shower head. Ok I get the idea of being environmentally friendly and saving water, but to have so little water come out of the shower head that Steve has to fill a bucket in the sink and dump it on me while Im in the shower so that I can actually wash my hair is a little excessive. I was about a day away from showering at the public showers at the beach that you use to rinse off which by the way had great water pressure and shower heads. Oh well, I guess we didnt go to Cozumel for a luxury vacation, we were there for the Ironman and that was the most important part of the trip.

For those of you that dont know what the Ironman is, it is a triathlon comprised of a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride and a 26.2 mile run all consecutively, with no breaks, as fast as you can. I know, I cant imagine why any human being would want to do this either but apparently its pretty popular and Steve really wanted to do it, so there I was in Cozumel at 4:15am awake and getting ready to head down the starting area so Steve can get all of his gear ready. Let me preface this by saying that the 6 months before we left Vegas Steve was training 3-5 hours a day pretty much everyday getting ready for this race. Once we moved down here, 2 months before the race, he trained maybe 1 hour total. I tried my best to talk him out of it but he's a guy, enough said.



So despite the lack of training he insisted on attempting the race. First up, the swim. I have to say it is a little crazy seeing 2,000 men and women swimming together as if they were a school of fish in the ocean. Anyhow, Steve did really well in the swim and finished 2.4 miles in just under 2 hours.

Next came the bike, 112 miles of it to be exact. He started off at a good pace and I saw him once on his first loop and he was looking pretty good. As I was tracking him on my i-phone through Ironman Live I noticed as the hours went by his pace started to slow and I knew he must be getting tired. After about 5 hours of bike time I was at the transition area waiting for him to come out for the run, and I was waiting and waiting and waiting, starting to get a tad bit worried. Finally he made it out about 15 mins before the time deadline for the bike and I could tell he was TIRED! I tried to cheer him on as he slowly started the run "Come on, only 26 miles left to run!!" not that that was any sort of incentive. As the sun started to

set and time ticked by he was still running/walking. At about mile 9 he came back around the loop where I could see him and he looked awful. I started to walk along side him and let him know that in order to finish the race in the allotted time he would have to pick up his pace to a minimum of a 10 minute mile for the remaining 17 miles and that would get him done right around midnight (yes, the race started at 7:00am) He looked at me in agony and said "I dont think I'm going to make it, Im cramping so bad I can barely walk" After me walking with him for another mile and a half trying to encourage him, he knew that despite how bad he wanted it the lack of training the last 2 months had taken its toll. After a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and 10.5 mile run/walk we called it a night and went back to the hotel to ice almost every joint in his body. Once we move to a training friendly environment he'll give it another shot. Still very proud of him, I know I couldnt swim 2.4 miles let alone ride ride 112 right after.

We stayed in Cozumel for one more day then headed back to Cancun for a little R&R before returning to Vieques.

December 4, 2010

We attended the Vieques Christmas Parade and tree lighting ceremony. This topic deserve a blog all its own which is coming soon (I need the photos to accompany it and am waiting on them from a friend). All I have to say is that one of the locals compared it to the Macys Day parade complete with fireworks extravaganza!

December 6, 2010

First trip to COSTCO!!! Steve took the day off and we flew over to San Juan at around 8:45am (plane was supposed to leave at 7:30 but even aviation is on island time). First stop was the mall. Even though I didnt really buy anything it was nice to have the option to. Next stop the pet supply store. There is only one pet store in all of Puerto Rico that sells the particular brand of dog food that we use so we had to go on an adventure to find it (streets are almost as bad on the main island as they are on Vieques). After we picked up the essential supplies for the children we headed into old San Juan for lunch. We found this cute little Italian restaurant that had WONDERFUL food, especially since you cant really get Italian on the island. Delicious! Finally it was time to go to Costco....never thought I would be so excited to see the magificent fully stocked warehouse that is Costco! It was as if the Angels were singing and the heavens were shining down as we

walked through the large roll-up doors, almost euphoric, I swear. Anyhow, back to reality. The only unfortunate part of our Costco trip was that if what we bought didnt fit into one of the 2 empty suitcases and one large ice chest we had we couldnt buy it. So now I had to be strategic about my Costco shopping, which is extremely hard when you havent seen decent meat, cheese, produce, wine or really much of anything in over 2 months! As you can tell from the picture I went for the absolute necessities, wine, meat and cheese. After all, I can always go longer between hair washings to save shampoo until the next time I can make it Costco. The whole day flew by way too fast, cant wait until the next Costco trip.

December 10, 2010

Our things finally got delivered today!! I have no idea how they manuevered the huge truck through the local streets to our house but they did! As soon as they   

started to unload the truck and we realized just how much stuff we had shipped that needed to fit in our little house Steve looked at me and said "Sh*t, we should have sold everything and rented a fully furnished house." This coming from the guy that was home on delivery day to unpack a few boxes and hasnt really been home since. Yeah tell me about it, unpacking everything and trying to figure out where the heck it is all going to go is no easy task (see December 13th).

December 13, 2010

Still Unpacking.....

 

  

And we're all Tired!

December 14, 2010

Did our first dive today from Mosquito pier. Cant belive it took us this long to get out there but we finally made it. The visibility wasnt too great as we have been having some pretty windy weather and storms to the North of us. Highlight of the dive was the huge sea turtle that was just as interested in checking us out as we were it. Forgot my camera again so as soon as I get the photo from our friends that we went diving with I will post it. We hope to start diving at least once a week so I'm sure I will have some better dive stories for you soon.

Have a great day everyone, more blogs on their way!