Tuesday, November 28, 1995 - Trinidad

This is the day I was not going to go to town. I was going to relax and go paddling. Ha! Spent the morning going through my papers and deciding what I wanted to take with me. I'll take all the junk related to my Kaiser claims and get that straightened out once and for all. Will also take whatever I need to do my income tax return. Went to the mini-mart to get some oranges. A woman there recognized me and told me there was a notice in the mail bin in the office that we had a package at the post office. I knew that had to be the mail from Steve that Roy had been waiting for. The office was closed until 12:30, so I went back to the boat, fixed lunch, and told Roy to prepare for a trip downtown. At 12:30, I went to the office to get the slip. Didn't find it in the bin that I thought said "J". Then the receptionist told me that was "I", not "J". The next bin was the one I needed. So I've been looking for mail in the wrong bin all this time. Sure looked like "J". Anyway, I found the slip, but it didn't say "parcel"; it said "card only", so that confused me. There was also a letter from Roy's daughter, Carol. I hurried to the bus, where Roy was already, and showed him the slip and Carol's letter. I couldn't understand why the post office would send us a notification for a card, but Roy figured it was the card to get the package of mail from Steve. While we were discussing all this, we rode past the Carenage post office, so we got off the bus at West Mall and caught a maxi back to Carenage. Roy was right. The "card" was a notice that there was a parcel for him at the Ajax Street post office. Certainly a roundabout way to do things. Anyway, we caught another maxi into Port-of-Spain and got off at Ajax Street. After half an hour or so, while the clerks moved as slowly as possible, we emerged with Roy's package of mail, which he was very glad to get. Roy had work to do on the boat, so he caught a blue bus back to Peake's, while I stayed downtown to try to get some things that Roy wanted. Made a couple of fruitless phone calls. Forgot to remove my card from the phone. I'm used to dropped coins into a public phone; I haven't gotten used to these cards yet. Of course, by the time I realized I no longer had it, it was long gone. Had 30 TT's left on it. I bought a 20 TT card, so I won't have so much to lose next time. Went to practically every electronics store in town, but none had the panel-mount DC voltmeter Roy wanted. I'll get it in California and mail it to him. But in one of the stores, I found 12-volt LED's, which is something else Roy wants. Just bought one. If it's okay, I'll go back and get more. Phoned a hardware store that might be able to get the armature Roy needs for his Rockwell trimsaw. They told me to call back tomorrow. I'm going to wrap up the log for now, because little of interest will be happening. Roy will be working on the boat, and I'll be flying back to California. Hasta la vista!