Happy birthday, Marti

Today would have been my mother's 90th birthday. We miss her every day.

Happy birthday, Marti. We love you.

absent - again!

It's been a strange winter so far. It's been colder so far than it has been for the last three or four years. And not just for a day or two. It's been a very cool and wet and windy January.

Despite the fact that there have been few winter storms making it into the Atlantic, driving waves (and tourists and surfers) to Puerto Rico, we've had a good couple of months of surfing. January closed out very strong.

And then I got sick for a week.Nothing major. Not "jungle fever" this time. I think it was what our friend calls "Jet Blue flu." Tourists bring down "bugs" from the States or pick them up on the planes and in a spirit of sharing, pass them along to us. It was good timing though. The surf has been small and pretty weak for the past week. With the wind keeping things churned up and reduced visiilitythere hasn't been a lot of diving. So I haven't missed much.

We did go diving yesterday finally, with a group from Michigan! It was a tough dive. Three of the divers were newbies. Two of them, Justin and Erin had a really hard time getting started. My buddy and resident dive instructor Darryl really had to work for this one. Turns out I was more congested from my JB flu than I thought. I struggled with clearing my ears so I wasn't much help.

In the end it was a good dive. Everybody came back safely and everybody had a good time. At the end of the dive Erin was so emotional she was crying in her dive mask. Justin, who started out with choruses of "I can't do this," exploded out of the water screaming, "oh my god! oh my god! That was so cool! Can we do it again? Right now?" We love it when that happens.

Waves are supposed to be flat through this week. Maybe we'll get more dives in. I hope so.