So what kind of bar are we?

Sometimes we're a surfer bar (Zan and her longboard in her sports car - not exactly the surfride of choice). Sometimes we're a dive bar (we talk about SCUBA diving a lot). Sometimes we're the "19th Hole" golf bar.

Sometimes we're a cowboy bar (what's a horse gotta do to get a beer in this place?).

We're always a great local place-to-hangout-and-chill neighborhood bar. And in the last year we've become known as a great local restaurant. (Our new friends Skip and Jane came to the island this weekend for a golf outing at Royal Isabel Golf Club. They were in Newark airport chatting with some folks. When their conversation partners heard Skip and Jane were coming to Isabela, they told them "Oh! There's this great little bar you have to go to! It's called Ola Lola's! They've got great burgers!")


Yesterday we entered a new phase: We became a biker bar! Our friend Jose brought a bunch of his friends on a ride from San Juan and they specifically came to Isabela to come to Ola Lola's. Awesome! Thank you, Jose - and everybody - for coming by. We had a great time.

Night dive

The ocean has finally cleaned up enough to make diving a fun idea. Darryl, John D. and I went night diving at Natural last night. It was beautiful! We saw shrimp, a big hawksbill turtle sleeping under a coral, lots of sleeping parrotfish, two good-sized moray eels, starfish, half-a-dozen reef squid and a really cool something else I haven't identified yet.

As we swam out in the dark to the "drop zone," I remarked that Elaine was going to ride Chocolate on the beach under the full moon. John responded, "That's crazy!" To which Darryl replied, "Well, think about we're doing." We all laughed, then dropped into the darkness and toward the sandy bottom 35 feet below us.

One of the most popular tourist activities on the island is to swim in the "bio-luminescent bays" at La Parguera and Fajardo. Swimming or just about any movement in the water for that matter, triggers these little creatures to give off light. It's like being surrounded by fireflies under water. Although La Parguera and Farjado are the most popular sites, you can see bioluminescence in many places. We could see the creatures just by looking in the water around our fins as we swam out. At one point in our dive we stopped and turned off our lights so we could wave our arms and watch them glow. Wow. Hey, just another one of the attractions of night diving!

Mary's (and John's) Birthday

On Saturday we had a "Surprise - it's not really your birthday" party for Mary Scott. We planned a little surprise party for her on her birthday, which was actually the Monday before. However, the surprise was on us: Mary was in New York! So we had a great time in her honor. Then on Saturday, we actually got to celebrate with her. We gave Mary the sombrero because - as the guest of honor - she deserved the biggest hat. All the rest of us wore hats too (supplied by Lacy), but somewhat smaller ones. A special Motown (Mary's favorite) mix of tunes was the music of the evening, including some songs like "My Girl" with lyrics rewritten especially for Mary.

And, to add to the Saturday celebration we also surprised our friend, John Delametter whose birthday was two days later. John got to wear the sombrego while he was lauded with "Happy Birthday" and "Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch" with lyrics written by Elaine especially for him. Everyone did a lot of laughing and helping to sing along. And, of course, there was yummy birthday cake. Evenings like that bring so many smiles to Ola Lola's. Thanks everyone!

Thanksgiving

Just a couple of photos from Thanksgiving at Marisol and JR's house. I hope we don't ever get so blasé that we take parties like this one for granted. We had amazing good food and we have amazing good friends. It is always such a good time getting together at their house. Thank you, Marisol and JR for opening your home and your hearts for all of us.

In the Thanksgiving post I said there would be more to give thanks for so here comes another one. We are so grateful to Dr. Lamela and his wife Lilly for allowing us to keep Chocolate and Sahara on their property. They had family staying in their house over the Thanksgiving weekend. Since people were in and out, we moved Sahara into a stall we built next to Ola Lola's and moved Chocolate on the other side of our house. It worked okay but shuffling the horses around reminded us of what a fantastic gift we have to be able to keep our horses safe and near. Thank you, Dr. Lamela!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. No matter where you are today, there is something to be thankful for.

Me, I am eternally grateful for my amazing wonderful beautiful wife Elaine (and she is grateful for the best guy in the universe, ME!); for our five amazing children; our three and 5/9ths grandchildren; for family even though they are spread from the East Coast to the Pacific Northwest; for all our wonderful friends in all our "communities" - kites, horses,diving, neighbors, festivals, Ola Lola's; for our fabulous Vizslas Amber and Jazz; for the Chocolate and for the opportunity to help another (equine) being, Sahara; for the unbelievable gift of being able to live in a place like this, our home. Thank you, Universe. Thank you, Guardian Angels. Happy Thanksgiving.

Bj, Carrie, Steve, Angel, Alex, Amy, Kennedy, Miguel, Jason, Sara, Katie, Jill, Jason, Erin, Jonah, Jason, Jen, Savannah, Jason, Trudy, Marisol, JR, Armani, Kalani, Lisa, Kurt, George, Mary, Tito, Tito, Jim, Linda, Amy, Dan, Shawna, James, Annie, Phil, Julie, Nikki, Ryan, Kenzie, Jordan, Matt, Mary, Roger, Cathy, Gary, Ben, Annie, Jack, Maggie, David, Zan, Susan, Trevor, Jen, Jackie, Jess, Andy, Natassia, Michael, John, Darryl, Ann, Dan, Josh Zach, Elizabeth, Russ, Kate, Alex, Eric, Dorothy, Woody, Kathy, Paul, Scott, Sarah, Lacy, Mae, Albert, Ron, Tina, Stanley, Charlie, Pat, Charlie...more to come.

We are SO lucky - and SO grateful.

Sahara - Week Two

This morning, on the beach:

Today was the end of week two with Sahara. She and Chocolate are now total buds. She follows him like a shadow. Because the doctor who owns the property behind us where Chocolate and Sahara stay has family coming for the weekend, we built Sahara a little corral - okay, a biggish stall - in a corner of our yard. We can tie Chocolate on the other side (like we did the month or so until the fence got fixed) but Sahara isn't rope-trained yet. She gets all tangled up. And that's dangerous for her and for whoever goes in to free her. So tonight we put her in her new stall to feed her and get her used to it. It's right next to the barport so we put on the lights and the music so she can get used to that too. The whole hour-and-a-half or two hours she was gone, Chocolate snorted and ran around and nickered for her. When he's out of the yard, she stands at the gate and nickers for him. And we thought it was going to be hard for us to give her up! (Assuming of course we ever do decide to give her up.)

Sahara continues to improve. She's showing signs of filling out. Her ribs are less pronounced, the ridge above her eyes is filling in, and she's starting to get a butt. Her energy levels are getting better as well. She's friskier, brighter.

We had a couple of mishaps at feeding time this week. Bottom line, I got kicked twice. Neither time was especially hard but the second kick left a pretty good bruise on my thigh. But we've since worked out some strategies to deal with feeding and we haven't had any more problems.

Elaine has been laid up with a bad ankle so I've ridden Chocolate a couple of times this week. I do understand why she loves it. I'm not nearly as good a rider as she is so I don't work him the way she does. Yesterday we rode on good long way on the beach and it was beautiful. Elaine and I are both looking forward to having a second horse so we can ride together. Sahara won't be that second horse for a long, long time.

There are more pictures of Sahara and Chocolate on our Flickr site.

JFK

Today is the 46th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. For trivia buffs, JFK was 46 when he was killed. That makes today something special in the Great Conspiracy Theory (but I don't know what).

For those of you old enough to remember: Do you remember where you were when you heard the news? It's one of those moments I think everyone remembers vividly. I was in the 7th grade in Mrs. Oligee's room, lined up to go home for the day when there was an announcement the President had been shot. I can still remember the way the room looked, the tall windows, even the color of the walls. I walked home crying, stopping in the office where my mother worked. Everyone there just sat in stunned silence.

I remember hearing the news that at a nearby elementary school kids actually applauded in class when it was announced that the President had been killed. Even then I was struck by how horrific that was. Whether you like or agree with the President or not, assassination is the worst possible means of changing a regime, no matter where you are but especially here in the U.S. I mean, I HATED Richard Nixon. I wanted him out of office but I never wanted him killed (for one thing it would have meant Spiro Agnew would have been President).

Was JFK a great President? I don't know. He sure made his share of mistakes (Bay of Pigs anyone? Although to be fair, the Bay of Pigs invasion strategy was developed under Eisenhower.). But he was an amazing presence during the Cuban Missile Crisis, reassuring, strong, during one of the scariest times in history. (BTW - The word is the Cuban Missile Crisis was not really about Russian nuclear missiles 90 miles from Florida. It was more about Russian nukes 200 nautical miles from what was then Ramey Air Force Base and is now the airport in Aguadilla and Roosevelt Roads naval base near San Juan. In 1962 Ramey Base was an important B-52 base. But from a public relations standpoint, going toe-to-toe with the Soviets with Florida as the target was much more impressive than if the target were Puerto Rico.) And much of what we now call the Civil Rights Movement gained support and momentum in the three short years of his presidency. On the other hand, so did our involvement in Vietnam.

I wish he had lived to fulfill the promise of "Camelot." Who knows how the world might be different today? Had he survived, he would be 92 today. Instead we will always remember him as young, vibrant, athletic (despite his chronically bad back).