Monday, March 4, 1996 - Trinidad

At the close of the previous log, I had just humiliated myself by falling off the gangplank and was getting ready to fly back to California for a couple of months. The flight to California went smoothly, with excellent, although tight, connections. Arrived in San Jose on schedule, but when I saw the new terminal, I thought I'd gotten off in the wrong city. What beautiful buildings! I didn't recognize the place at all. Kathy and Brian picked me up in Ladybug and took me to their apartment. It was great to be back in California, but the abrupt thirty or forty degree drop in temperature whammied my system, and I soon came down with a sinus infection. Unfortunately, I passed it on to just about everyone who came near me, including Bill and his family. Went to Kaiser and got a prescription that not only cured the sinus infection but actually stopped the chronic cough I've had for years. How wonderful not to be coughing any more! My scrapes and bruises from the fall were healing nicely, but my right thumb continued to hurt, so I went to Kaiser about that. They x-rayed it and found I'd torn the ligament and a small piece of bone had broken loose. Apparently this happened when I first slid off the board and was trying to hang on with just my right hand. When my body went down, all my weight went onto the one hand and tore the ligament. The doctor had a splint put on my thumb, which was very awkward. I couldn't do much of anything with my right hand, but whenever I started to feel sorry for myself, I thought of Linda and Roy and realized how lucky I was. For me, it's nothing but a temporary inconvenience, not a lifetime disability. After three or four weeks, the splint came off and I could use my right thumb again. However, I also found out that I have arthritis in the joints of my thumb. It had never hurt before, so I guess the fall exacerbated it. I greatly enjoyed seeing my children and grandchildren again and meeting my new granddaughter, Hailey, who is a doll. She doesn't appreciate grandma holding her, however. I also found out I'm going to be a great-grandmother! Yikes, that sounds old! Paul and Heather are expecting a baby in August. After several days at Kathy's place (too many from Kathy's point of view), I began staying at various hostels, especially the one above Saratoga and the one in the Los Altos Hills. I also stayed at the Santa Cruz hostel a few times and once each at Pigeon Point, Montara, and Marin. They were all beautiful locations, and I greatly enjoyed hiking on the Marin Headlands. It was a glorious day. I also had a great hike behind Hidden Villa hostel in the Los Altos Hills, in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, and the Forest of Nisene Marks. Nancy invited me to stay at her house in Pittsburg, so I went up there in January. She has rented the house to two friends and only goes home on weekends. During the week, she stays in her San Francisco apartment, across the street from her job. She got rid of her car, since she no longer needs it. The BART station is close to her apartment, it takes her to Concord, and a bus takes her from there to within a couple of blocks of her house. I greatly enjoyed staying there. It gave me a chance to unload all my junk from Ladybug and get it reorganized. Nancy threw a party for me one evening. Another evening, she took me and her renters, Linda and Chris, to dinner. One Saturday, she invited me to San Francisco and showed me her job and her apartment. We also visited Jeanette's apartment and walked down to the waterfront, near the old Sutro Baths. It was a very pleasant day. I was thrilled to go to drugstores and grocery stores and see all the STUFF. I was able to buy things I hadn't seen for months. I bought so much, I had to buy another bag to carry it all back. I'd have liked to buy more, but there's a limit to how much I can carry. Fortunately, I was able to check my bags all the way from San Jose to Trinidad, so I only had one little carry-on bag to juggle on the plane. The return trip to Trinidad was something else. For a while, I wasn't sure I'd make it out of Miami. The trip took two days, because of the impossibility of making the connection in Miami. Since I had to leave San Jose at the crack of dawn, I rented a motel room the day before and unloaded my stuff. Then I returned Ladybug to Kathy's garage and rode buses back to the motel. Got a good night's sleep, woke up at 3:30 a.m., ate breakfast at a 24-hour restaurant next door, and took a shuttle bus to the airport at five. The trip from San Jose to Miami went smoothly. In Dallas, the electric tram was out of commission, but luckily I didn't have far to go from one gate to the next. Arrived in Miami on schedule and took a bus to the AYH hostel in Palm Beach. It was the worst hostel I ever stayed at, but it was tolerable for one night. Check-out time was noon, so I got to the airport around one o'clock for my 4:40 flight. Checked in at the American Airlines counter and was told the flight left from Gate E8, so I went there and relaxed with a good book. Around three o'clock, I began wondering why I was the only person in the waiting area. There were no airlines personnel at the counter and no sign announcing the flight. When no one had shown up by 3:30, I really began to get uneasy. I decided to go to the ladies' room before my flight. On the way there, I passed one of the monitors that list the departures, and I looked for the one to Port of Spain. It was hard to see, because it was way down at the bottom of the screen. When I finally found it, I was shocked to see that the gate had been changed! No announcement had been made on the P.A. I immediately began hurrying to the new gate, which was in another building. I had to go up an escalator and ride a tram. It took ten minutes to get there. If I had waited much longer, I might have missed my flight. I had to go through another security check. Then I grabbed my book and carry-on bag and hurried to the ladies' room. It was several minutes later before I realized I didn't have my pocketbook! I must not have picked it up when it came out of the x-ray machine. It had my ticket, passport, money, credit cards, everything in it. Panicked, I rushed back to the conveyor belt. No sign of my pocketbook! I asked the employees, but they just shrugged. I was nearly in despair, when another employee called me over to her desk. She had my pocket-book. What a relief! Everything was in it. I thanked her profusely and went to the waiting area. Now one would think that after going through all that, I would be super, super careful from then on, but no. I had taken my ticket out of my purse and stuck it in my book so it would be handy for boarding. It was getting close to flight time, and I hadn't heard a boarding announcement, so I got up to go over to the counter and check. The ticket slipped out of my book and fell on the floor without my noticing it! Fortunately, a gentleman seated across from me saw it, picked it up, and handed it to me. I was beginning to wonder if I was being sent a message not to take that flight, but decided that was silly superstition. Soon I was on the plane, all relaxed, and the flight went smoothly. Arrived in Trinidad around ten o'clock at night. Had no problem going through Immigration, but when I got to Customs, a bureaucratic hassle began. I had taken our old sonar to California and exchanged it for a newer, forward-looking model. I didn't think I'd have to pay duty on it, since it was a replacement for a piece of equipment we'd already brought into the country. To be on the safe side, I asked if I had to declare it, and they said I did. Then the officer asked for a letter. What letter? I couldn't find out what letter he wanted. He sent me to the Customs office, and again I was asked for a letter, but no one would tell me what kind of a letter they wanted. Once, I thought he said a letter from the owner, so I told him I was one of the owners of the boat; did he want a letter from me? No, no, no! But he still didn't tell me what kind of letter or from whom. I stood around for an hour-and-a-half (that is not an exaggeration) while the officer busied himself with other matters. Finally he told me to get a letter from the marina, showing the name of the boat and when we had arrived, and to take the letter to Customs in Chaguaramas. It took him less than two minutes to tell me that. Why hadn't he said so in the first place? He had kept me waiting so long, I was afraid Roy might have decided I wasn't on the plane and left. (Roy couldn't come into the security area where I was, of course.) Roy was worried, too, and he asked an airport employee to see if I was there. Luckily, the employee found me and reported back to Roy, so we were both relieved. The Customs officer kept our sonar and said I could come back for it after I got the letter and permission from Chaguaramas Customs, so that meant another long trip the next day. Roy and I were delighted when I finally emerged. We took a taxi all the way to Peake's at a cost of 300 TT's, which was well worth it, since it was the middle of the night, and I had all that heavy luggage. The previous night, Roy had had an unfortunate and unnecessary misadventure. When I was in California, Roy had phoned me every Monday afternoon at two o'clock, but the last Monday I was there, he hadn't been able to phone me, because the slip of paper with Nancy's phone number on it had blown away in a gust of wind. He had Kathy's phone number, so he called her and told her answering machine what had happened and to please let me know, so Kathy phoned me and told me. That was a relief, because I'd been worrying that something had happened to Roy. The next morning, I left Nancy's house and went to San Jose to get my new glasses. I spent the night at the Sanborn hostel, and the next day went to a motel, as stated above. In the meantime, Roy had been trying to reach me through Kathy, but I hadn't known that. Kathy gave him Nancy's phone number, but when he called there, he found out I'd left. He called Kathy again, but she didn't know where I was. (That was on Tuesday.) Wednesday night, he called Kathy again, and she told him I'd gone to a motel and would be flying out the next morning. Unfortunately, I had never gotten around to telling Roy that the return flight would take two days, so he thought I was going to "surprise" him and return a day early. Thursday night, he went all the way out to the airport, a distance of maybe thirty or forty miles that required two maxis and a route taxi. When he got there he found out from American Airlines that I wasn't on that flight (American only has one flight a day to Trinidad), so he had to make that long trip back to Peake's late at night. When he got to Port of Spain, the big buses had stopped running, so Roy had to walk about a mile-and-a-half through poorly lit, nearly deserted streets to where he could get a maxi to Chaguaramas. Fortunately, he had had the foresight to take a container of mace with him. When a man approached him and demanded money, Roy said, "I have mace!" and the man took off. All's well that ends well, they say. We were finally back together, safe and sound. Roy had turned the boat around and rigged up a new gangplank that was much easier to use. I was able to get on and off the boat without falling. Carnival season was in full swing, but we were disappointed by it. Most of the activities were late at night, so we didn't go to them. We went to a daytime presentation of "traditional" carnival. Most of it was boring, because we couldn't understand a word the characters were saying, but some parts were the grossest performances we had ever seen in our lives. Young men with their bodies painted blue and with long tails and wooden pitchforks, danced around in all sorts of contortions, including getting down in the dirt and eating mouthfuls of whatever filth was down there. They slobbered and growled and looked absolutely disgusting. Sometimes they went right up to members of the audience in a threatening manner and were given money, which they stuck in their mouths and chewed on. These were the "Jab M'lassies" or "Blue Devils". "Jab" is a mispronunciation of the French word "diable", which means "devil". A couple of hundred years ago, when all this started, molasses was abundant and cheap. In their Carnival celebrations, some of the slaves would smear themselves with molasses and dance around, pretending to be devils. Thus the name "Jab M'lassies". We stayed as far away from them as we could. They were far more disgusting that I can describe. Another time, we went to a daytime parade, and were greatly disappointed to see that it was the same group that had been at the previous performance. It was the sorriest, most poorly organized parade we had ever seen. The "music" consisted of banging on old gas cans. Since we'd come with a group, we couldn't return until it was over. We were very glad when the "parade" finally ended. The middle of February, we hauled out at IMS. That proved to be a mistake. We chose IMS because it was less crowded and seemed to have good shops. We quickly found out why it was less crowded -- no one in their right mind would go there. The electricity had been wired wrong, and the voltage kept fluctuating between 115 and 85, which is kind of rough on power tools and microwave ovens and other electrical gadgets. People had been complaining for months, but nothing was done about it. There was no visible sign of management, and there didn't seem to be much communication between the office and the yard workers. Before we had signed up to haul out, we had asked if we could get enough scaffolding to go all around the boat, and we were assured we could have all the scaffolding we were willing to pay for. As soon as the boat was on land, I went to the office and asked for enough scaffolding to go from one end of the boat to another and was told we'd have it in the morning. The morning came and went. In the afternoon, we asked the guy in charge of bringing the scaffolding, and he said he'd take care of it. A week later, we were finally brought enough scaffolding for about two-thirds of the boat. I went back to the offfice and asked for more. I also asked the guy in charge and again he said he'd take care of it. In the meantime, Roy and I were greatly hampered in working on the boat. When the weekend arrived, we finally just went out and rounded up the scaffolding we needed from pieces that were lying around the yard. This wasn't easy. The planks weighed close to 200 pounds. I'm under doctor's orders not to lift more than 20 pounds, so Roy scrounged up an old wheelbarrow, loaded my end of the plank into the wheelbarrow, and I tried to push it. Unfortunately, the thing hit a little ditch, wobbled, and the plank slipped off and hit Roy's leg, making an ugly gash. We finally got the scaffolding in place, however, and then our work proceeded apace.