MARIA log, day 60 November 21 Tuesday

Tuesday, November 21, day 60

Wow! Clear, bright and sunny all day. No rain.

I started working on the fence around the house. It was completely wrecked by wind, flooding. and falling trees, but I managed to salvage most of the boards from the front fence. The bamboo fence and supporting framework is a total loss.

We waited all day for news of a shipment of horse supplies. Five pallets of stuff have been sitting at the airport in San Juan. Hacienda, the island tax department, wanted us to pay $500 import tax on aid donated by one nonprofit to another nonprofit to be given free to horse owners in need. It's taken nearly a week to straighten that out.

If this is the way all the aid to the island is being treated, no wonder so little is getting through to those who need it.

The truck with the supplies finally arrived just before dark. Elaine ha a couple of friends/volunteers to help unload. In a couple of hours we had it all unloaded, sorted and stacked. The bad news is there were supposed to be five small generators in this shipment. Somehow, when they started loading the truck at the airport, the generators weren't there. Hmmmmm...

This isn't the first shipment that's gone missing. A pallet of 40 bags of grain went missing at the airport in Aguadilla about two weeks after the hurricane.

Back when we took the RAM (Remote Area Medical) people to Iglesia Ciudad de Salvación, I had a conversation with their pilot Ron about who should be providing aid. Based on his reading of writings of the Founding Fathers, primarily The Federalist Papers, his premise is the Federal Government has no business being in the natural-disaster relief business. In his view the proper providers are church and community groups like Iglesia Ciudad de Salvación. (There is a certain irony in his use of The Federalist Papers to support his position. The Federalist Papers were written to create support for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Alexander Hamilton and the other authors advocated a strong central government.)

While I absolutely agree that the people at Iglacia Ciudad de Salvación are doing an infinitely  better job than either the Puerto Rican or U.S. Federal government of getting relief in the hands of those who need it, their efforts, like ours with horse owners, points out the greatest inherent weakness of this system: resources.

Even now, more than two months after the hurricane moved on, there are still a huge number of vulnerable people--and horses, dogs, and cats--on this island.

But the hurricane is history, old news. People in the States have given, donated, sent care packages, supplies. The storm is over. Things are getting better, getting back to "normal." Right? There is gas for cars. So 75% of the island still doesn't have electricity. Generators are back in stock at Home Depot. Even the grocery store has generators for sale. Yeah, some things are hard to come by but there were plenty of turkeys in the stores for Thanksgiving. For those who could afford them. And those who had a way to cook them.

Ciudad's big stocks of supplies are gone. Except for small trickles of individual donations, there aren't anymore supplies coming, for either people or horses.

Don't get me wrong. I do not believe the government has a duty to feed our horses. I do believe the government has an obligation to help people. The government has the continuing resources and the ability to deliver them as long as the need exists. Community groups, like the church and our local efforts to help horses, only have resources as long as donors keep them supplied. Once those donations dry up--and they are drying up--community groups have nothing left to give, no matter how much they want to.

MARIA log day 59 November 20 Monday

Today's best moment: talking with our friend Nancy in Kalamazoo. Nancy has gone through several years of major health and medical issues. She and Elaine started the "Best Moments" movement to help Nancy focus on positive things when her world is so full of negative.

Well before the hurricane, Nancy sent me a hat that has "Life is Good" on it. Little did either of us know at the time how important that hat would become.

Every day since the hurricane, every time I go out, whether standing in line for gas or money or going to the grocery, I've worn that hat with that message. Life is Good! In some of the darker moments that hat is a reminder to me and--based on comments I've received--for others as well.

Today I got the chance to thank Nancy personally--even only by phone--for her great gift.

No rain today but cloudy all day.

Wipes. You know like baby butt wipes. Who besides parents of small kids knew how important they are?!

Since the hurricane, wipes have become an integral part of everyone's kit. Early on, when there was no water for showering, wipes were critical. We washed our hands, faces, armpits, necks, and other parts with wipes.

Now we don't know how we ever got along without them. We have them in the car, in the truck, next to the bed, in the kitchen, the bathroom, with the horse tack. I haven't been diving yet but I'm sure I'll find a reason to keep them in my dive gear tub.

Thank you to everyone who sent us wipes! You have no idea how useful they are.

MARIA log, Day 58, November 19, Sunday

Sunday, November 19 day 58

Now 60 days without electricity.

Aye!Early morning rain--again! In fact it rained on and off all day.

In between raindrops I started rebuilding the wooden front fence, We not sure what we're going to do around the rest of the yard where the bamboo fence was before the hurricane. Anything is going to be expensive. For now we're putting up web construction-site fencing. Its not exactly secure but at least it marks limits.

We went to see Sprocket and Kiki and Kieshla today. Kiki is doing a great job with Sprocket. That boy just looks better and better! Kiki is actually riding him.

MARIA log, Day 57, November 18, Saturday

Saturday, November 18 day 57

Light but steady rain most of the morning. then grey all day.

The rain and the fact that today is the biggest cabalgata on the island made it a slow day at Helping Horses.

What's a cabagata you ask? In the simplest terms, think poker run or pub crawl on horseback. In a normal cabalgata 10 or 15 or so riders get together for an afternoon and/or evening of riding, drinking, partying, and fun.

On this weekend every year riders and horses from all over the island descend on Aguada, two tows south of us. They come in custom-made trailers and home-made trailers, in the backs of fancy pick-ups and POS pick-ups. Locals just ride their horses. In a good year 2500-3000 (no one know exactly how many) horses and riders pack the streets and back roads of Aquada. Whole streets and neighborhoods are closed by the horse traffic.

Most of the time the horses manage to find their way back to their trailers or stables. Which is good because a great number of riders are in no condition to navigate. They probably shouldn't be on horseback at all.

One of these years we're going to ride in the Aquada cabalgata. Or maybe just go watch from a bar.

MARIA log, Day 56, November 17, Friday

Friday, November 17, day 56

Woke up this morning to the sound of rain! Imagine that.

Fortunately today was just morning rain. This afternoon we got a big load of stuff for Helping Horses: 43 bales of compressed alfalfa, 23 bales of hay, bags of grain and alfalfa cubes. It wasn't raining when we unloaded all that.

Pizza night with Carole and Rolf. It was kind of a subdued pizza night.

NOW October 26, 2018

For me lately it's been all about the horses.

First it was the rush to get ready for Cass's arrival. Getting him here took a couple of days longer than we anticipated. He finally arrived safely, if a bit scraped up from his experience. He adapted pretty quickly to his new home.

After Cass got here, we had two weeks to get ready to move our other four horses. We had to build two more corrals, another pasture, and a training square pen. All of our corrals and pastures are fenced with electric fencing, not hard boards. For one thing, electric fencing is a lot less expensive than board fencing. It's easier to repair and it's easy to move or reconfigure. Normally  we use metal T-posts for the electric fences. Because most of our T-posts were already in use in the existing pastures, we decided to use "palos"--Puerto Rican cut-from-the-woods fence posts--for the corrals. Using special insulators, we can attach the fencing wire to the wood posts.

So what's with electric fence anyway? For those who aren't familiar, it is a fairly common fencing in the U.S. Here in PR, not so much. We use a poly rope with wire embedded in it for the line. An energizer--a source of electricity--is attached to the lines. We use solar-powered energizers. We don't need a connection to electrical service so we can put them anywhere, even in remote fields where there is no electricity. They can generate up to 7,000 volts. But--and here's the key--it is at very low amperage, less than one-half amp. If you touch the line it, will give you a jolt. but it won't hurt you. It startles and stings the horses. They don't want any part of it so they stay away from the fence.

The horses seem to know when the fence is on or off. I don't know if they feel it or hear it, but somehow they know. If it's on, once they've been "tagged," they don't challenge it. If it's off, well, they just might.

The one place we're not using wire is the training pen. That is all palos, both for the posts and for the rails. We're getting the for a little over $1 a piece. That's a whole lot less than $13 for 4"x4" posts and $5 for 2"x4" rails. And I really like the way it looks.

Our friend Moses has been amazing. He arranged to get the wooden palos for us. He put most in most of the palos in the corrals. He pretty much built the training square. Because so many of our T-posts are still in the old pastures, the new pasture is a mix of T-posts and palos. Moses put in all of those palos as well. I absolutely could not have completed this without him.

Last Sunday we moved our four horses to their new home. Elaine and Marie rode KTJ and Zip. We trailered Chocolate and Sprocket, They too seem to be settling into their new home.

We now have a routine to work the horses every day. This is the first time they have been consistently regularly worked since before the hurricane. They all need the exercise. We've ridden a couple of times this week. I'm kind of alternating between Chocolate and Cass. Choco is still gaining strength back in his leg after tendon pull so we're taking it slow with him. I'm grateful that I have another horse available to ride.

Since our horse are now here, we've taken down all the fences at the old place. Now I have T-posts and wire to start fencing new fields. 

There is a little bit of flashback to the months after the hurricane for me right now. I'm not shooting surf pictures any more, at least not for now. Between waves and bad visibility caused by rain, I haven't been diving in nearly two months. Add to that all the horse work and it feels like after the hurricane--all work and no play. I need to change that. My soul is crying for time in the water.

I thought about going diving today but Elaine and Marie are across the island evaluating horses. The two mounted police units on the island are disbanding. The Department of Public Security is planning to donate the horses to non-profits that work with their communities. Hmmmmm! So they are meeting with people from DPS and checking out more horses. She's sending me photos of horses as I type this. Oh. dear goddess--more pastures, more corrals.

Well, I think you're up to date now.

MARIA log, Day 55, November 16, Thursday.

It's the raining season. It rains every day. Sometimes afternoons, some days mornings, sometimes overnight, some days all of the above.

Last night we had a huge storm. Okay, Maria was a huge storm!

Last night we had blasting bolts of lightning, huge shake-the-house-and-scare-the-dogs thunder claps, sideways rain driven by the wind.

But no flooding, no pieces of roof flying off. Just a good ol' fashioned tropical thunderstorm. Lying there listening to the storm, I couldn't help but think of people like our neighbor Robert, riding out this storm in a tent behind the remains of his house, destroyed by Maria.

Or the people still living under tarps instead of roofs. How did this storm have feel to them? Was it like deja vú?

We were safe in our intact house, under our solid roof. And we are incredibly grateful!

A NOW moment: We had a HUGE thunderstorm--lightning, wind, rain, THUNDER!--last night. Okay, not Maria huge, but big. I was reminded--again--how little lightning and thunder there were during the hurricane. I expected more.

Maria log, Day 54, November 15, Wednesday

Travel around the area has become a cha-cha--one step forward, two steps back, slide to the side, repeat.

FEMA-funded (we think) crews are everywhere picking up debris of the sides of roads. Electric crews are starting to show up as well  When the crews are out, roads are blocked, sometimes completely, sometimes for hours. Sometimes there are ways around the block, sometimes not.
We usually don't find out a road is blocked until we get to the actual work site, to the actual block.

Back up. Turn around. Look for another route to wherever it is you're trying to go. Often as not, that route is blocked as well. Back up. Turn around. Look for another route.

On the one hand it's frustrating and time consuming trying to get anywhere. On the other hand, "you must learn patience, Grasshopper." These are signs something is happening, that something is getting done.

Maria log, Day 53 November 13, Monday

Monday, November 13

We had our first complainer at Helping Horses. This guy was spreading all kinds of horse manure--that we weren't distributing the food properly, that we were selling grain "under the table," that we were keeping most of the grain for our own horses. He said he had pictures of "someone" loading 28 bags of grain in a truck behind the police station. It "had to be someone in cahoots" with the police taking the grain for themselves.

Yeah, he saw someone loading grain at the police station. Me! He apparently didin't see me and our friend and volunteer Ivan driving those 28 bags of grain to the Picadero and unloading them. Then coming back to the police for two more loads totaling 50 more bags. This was the grain the police brought from the race track, the load from when the truck broke down and we had to haul it the rest of the way.

The irony is this guy came the first day and got more aid than almost anyone else. He kept coming back asking for more.

Actually we did have one other person complain. He complained to Annie that we were only doing this in Isabela and not in Ponce. Hey, dude--you're welcome to come join the party in Isabela! Or feel free to start your own program in Ponce.

But stop f-ing complaining!

Caught up in the NOW, October 7

 Flashback to a year ago: Rolf's post-hurricane birthday. Carole wasn't sure she could get a carrot cake--Rolf's favorite--because the bakery in the grocery store wasn't  sure they had enough carrots. I didn't take any pictures this year because I was the cook, flipping pancakes by request.

It may be "now" and the hurricane may have been a year ago, but flashbacks continue.

Last night we celebrated our friend Rolf's 89th birthday. It was a flashback to a year ago: thunder, rainy and cloudy and gloomy all day (after the hurricane, it rained every day for a month; the sun barely showed it's face ). When we got to Carole and Rolf's house, we were serenaded by the neighborhood-wide song of generators. The power was out and had been all afternoon. So like a year ago, we made dinner and sat in semi-darkness, listening to the rain. And like a year ago, our "family" was all together, this year including Jeremy's wife Anna and their daughters Penny and Vivian, gathered around the table, and we celebrated another year of life!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch: Last week Michelle, one of our friends and colleagues from Rincon/Aguada, told us she has to return to her home in the UK for a few months. She asked us if she could board her horse Casanova (usually shortened to Cass) with us. We went down to Aguada to see him and--yeah, we'll take him. He's a quarter horse, bigger than Chocolate, not as big as Zip. Nice horse! He'll actually be a good horse for me to ride, especially as Chocolate is recovering from a leg injury.

But--she's leaving Monday and needs us to take him right away! So I've spent the last week putting up an electric fence corral for him and fencing the first pasture area. This is all stuff that needs to be done so we can bring our horses down to Castaways in a couple of weeks. The prospect of bringing Cass in just accelerated the timetable.

Cass was supposed to come Saturday. Unfortunately, Cass was in an accident in a trailer in June. with that memory, when they loaded him in the trailer Saturday morning, he freaked out when they closed the trailer door. His corral and pasture will be here when he gets here. We're hoping that will be tomorrow late morning.

Our other horses are still up the road where they've been for a little over a year. Their living (pasture) space is shrinking as we take down posts to fence in fields here at Castaways.

While all this is going on, Elaine is busy getting all the paperwork--leases, insurance, non-profit applications--in order for Horses of Hope. By the way, we were not chosen as a finalist in the Chipstarter thing. We have to start looking for another funding source to build a covered arena,

It could be January for all the looking forward to an exciting future but looking backward and remembering what was happening a year ago we're doing. (The month of January is named for Janus, the Roman god with two faces, one looking to the future, one looking to the past.) Exciting times!

NOW, September 22, 3018

I wanted to see what Crashboat looked like a year after the hurricane. So, I dove there on Saturday, a year and a day after Maria.

I'm pleased to say fish were abundant, which means they are finding food on the ruins. Little things - tubeworms, sponges, little bits of coral are starting to grow on the wreckage. Watching the underwater renew itself is going to be one of the best things over the next couple of years.

We're supposed to have waves for the next week or more so there won't be any diving for a few days. More Maria log posts to come.

NOW and then, September 20

One year ago last night the lights went out. For us the lights didn't come back on for five months. Other people waited much longer.

One year ago today we hunkered down in a friend's concrete house, listening to the wind and the rain, no news, no contact with anyone outside our little box, not knowing what was coming or what to expect, but safe and together.

Today, now, it's calm, in fact, no wind at all. It's cloudy and might rain later, but that's kind of the way every day is this time of year. There are no tropical storms or hurricanes on the immediate horizon.

I am surprised at how emotional last night and this morning are, not just for me but apparently for many of us given the posts and comments others are making. But it's a very strange, odd emotionality (if that's even a word). I feel totally connected to the moment, to those around me who went through Maria whether they are right next to me or far away. At the same time I feel disconnected, like I'm watching from outside my body or watching a movie of myself. The calm is almost eerie, as unnatural in it's own way as the hurricane was. Yesterday was exactly the same kind of day but it didn't feel strange yesterday, only today.

As I've said before, the effects of those 30 hours a year ago are still with us. 

NOW September 17, 2018

Whew! You probably heard about that little storm--Hurricane Florence--that hit the East Coast this week. If you're far away from it, be grateful. If you're anywhere near Florence, our hearts go out to you. (Meanwhile, the Twit-in-chief can only rant that the nearly 3,000 deaths in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria are a political ploy by Democrats to make him look bad. As if he needed their help!)

A good friend of ours moved back to the States with her family after Maria. Part of the reason was her school-age son. But partly she--like many others--had a difficult time with the devastation and slow recovery after the storm. After things settled down (I won't use the phrase "returned to normal"), they came back. But things here on the island still weren't the same. It still wasn't "normal." she and here husband decided to move back to the States permanently.

They settled in. They just bought a house, just--as in two weeks ago, in North Carolina, near (but not on) the coast. And Florence hit.

Florence was not as devastating as Maria. It wasn't as powerful to begin with and diminished as it approached the coast. Still, the wind was near 100 mph. And the rain! And rain and rain and rain. Our friends apparently didn't loose electric, or if they did it was only for a short time, because she was able to keep posting updates on Facebook.

You could tell from her posts, both in what she wrote and reading between the lines, how incredibly stressful this was for her.

Folks, PTSD is real! And it sucks! And it is not reserved for combat veterans or police. No one who goes through something like Maria comes out unchanged. I wrote about this a bit earlier: different things set off different reactions in people. For Elaine, it's anytime there is a constant, persistent banging noise. It takes her right back to that night, listening to the wind and the banging of that piece of roofing against the door of the house where we stayed. She zones out and it takes a little time for her to come back.

I can only imagine what living through that--again--was like for our friends.  And for people on the other islands: first they got hit by Hurricane Irma. Before they had time to process that, Maria hit less than two weeks later. How do you deal with that?

It is almost exactly one year later. We are still feeling and dealing with the effects of Hurricane Maria.

NOW Friday, August 31

This is a NOW post but it is related to Hurricane Maria.

Over the last week we dove and snorkeled two sites that we haven't visited since Maria, Rompeolas and Steps Beach in Rincon.

Rompeolas is a site in Aguadilla, It is a shallow, easy-to-get-to dive with a nice reef at the south end and really interesting rocks and cracks to the north. Maria devastated the area, destroying an oceanside bar and damaging all of the houses along the beach. The beach itself, like so many, disappeared, stripped of nearly all the sand. The damage is clear even in this photo taken three months after the storm.

Because of the shoreline damage and given that Rompeolas is less than a mile from Natural and half-a-mile from Crashboat, I was really afraid of what we'd find underwater.

We've had a lot of rain in the last week, thanks to a lingering "tropical wave" so visibility wasn't the best. Still, I was pleasantly surprised at how much of the reef survived.

There are more corals, both soft and hard, and more sponges surviving here than at Natural. I can't explain it. Just one of Mother Nature's quirks.

We also snorkeled at Steps Beach (the surfers call it Tres Palmas) in Rincon. This is kind of a bellweather area for us. One of the best remaining stands of elkhorn coral is at Steps. Once ubiquitous in the Caribbean and Central America, now up to 95% of the elkhorn coral in the world is dead. So this place is important.

As we first swam out, I was saddened by the amount of broken coral near shore. But as we swam into deeper water, the huge slabs of healthy coral colonies began to appear.

Further out the sloping reef also appeared in good shape. The hard and soft corals, anenomes, and sponges all seemed healthy and none the worse for having survived a hurricane. In some ways this isn't surprising. Rincon faces west. Steps Beach is south of the point of Rincon that juts out into the sea. (The point of Rincon is the point where the Atlantic Ocean becomes the Caribbean Sea.) The heaviest ocean forces from Maria were from the north and Steps was pretty protected from that. It is still a delicate area with endangered corals. It was good to see how well it survived.

And to make the day complete, Stephanie (our friend and the new owner of Ola Lola's) swam with a turtle for the first time.

Maria log day 50 November 11 Saturday

Saturday, November 11, day 50

Yep, we were busy! More than 130 people showed up today. Some were on the waiting list from before but a third of them were new registrations. The 80 bags of grain and the repackaged alfalfa went quickly.

Ric and Michelle - our husband and wife vet team - and Manuel, our farrier, were busy too.

Fifteen people brought 20 horses to be seen.

When we first came to the island, seeing horses in the backs of pickup trucks was pretty strange. Now it's just commonplace, a part of the culture, no big deal.

I did see something I've never seen before. One guy, after talking to Ric, rode his Paso Fino around the parking lot. This was obviously a show horse. After showing off for a few minutes, the guy rode the horse into the back of his pickup truck. No ramp - the horse jumped into the truck bed. (Damn - I missed the video of that one!) Before the afternoon was over I watched two more horses - this time without riders - jump in to pickup trucks.

When we closed up for the day, Elaine, Ric, Michelle and I went to Ocean Front for a late lunch. Ocean Front's ocean-side deck was badly damaged by the storm surge from Hurricane Irma. Maria finished it off, They made a make-shift bar and seating in half of the parking lot. The rest of the parking lot was full of heavy equipment dumping huge rocks to make a seawall.

It was great having some time to catch up with good friends. Oh - happy Veterans' Day.

Maria log day 49, November 10, Friday

Friday, November 10, day 49

Our work to help other horse owners continues. So many people need help, so many horses!

On Thursday our friend Michelle brought 40 bags of alfalfa cubes from the racetrack on the other side of the island. The first thing was to transfer them from Michelle's trailer to the Ola Lola deck.

Our other Michelle friend, Michelle from Tropical Trailrides, gave us eight 50-pound bags of alfalfa pellets.

This morning I loaded half the alfalfa in our truck to take to the Picadero. Volunteers repacked the cubes and pellets into small two-pound packages to give out.

Most of the horses here have never had anything as rich as this alfalfa. And now, post-Maria, their nutrition levels are way down. If owners were to feed large amounts of the alfalfa cubes, there is a great danger of the horses colicing, a digestive disorder which in severe cases can be fatal.

We were expecting more grain to come from the racetrack today. And it did - sort of.

Two Isabela police officers volunteered to drive to Canovanas on the other side of San Juan to pick up the grain. Because the Municipio de Isabela is a sponsor of the program, they could use the municipio's roll-off truck.

It started getting late and they weren't back yet and we started to worry. We got a message that the truck and the grain were in Isabela but they couldn't get it to us at the Picadero. On the way back from San Juan, they were involved in a minor accident. Eight bags of grain wound up on the highway. The policemen stopped in the middle of the Autopista (expressway) and recovered all but two bags of grain!

Somewhere after the accident the clutch cable on the truck broke. They drove more than halfway home in first gear. Okay, people - that's above and beyond!

One of volunteers, our good friend Ivan, and I took my truck to the police station to transfer the grain. It took us three heavily over-loaded trips to get all the grain to the Picadero. We finished unloading too late for the Friday group. But we're ready for Saturday! We expect Saturday to be busy. we have grain and we have a vet and a farrier coming to do clinics.

It's Friday so it's pizza night at Carole and Rolf's. St. Jeremy - who has done so much of all of us - is leaving tomorrow to go back to Michigan to be with his wife, daughter and new baby girl for a week. So tonight is "special" pizza night - gourmet pizza from Junior's Pizza rather than the "usual" food truck pizza.

Any excuse for a celebration! Jeremy is going to be with his family. Yay! Celebrate! Next week when Jeremy comes back - He's back! Yay! Celebrate!

Re: a question

Thank you to everyone who responded to my question about continuing to write about Hurricane Maria. The response, both in comments here and via email, is that you still want to hear about Maria.

I'm grateful for that, and grateful for the responses. The next post will be a Maria post.

A question

It's now been almost a year since Hurricane Maria. Is anybody out there still interested in the Maria stories?

Let me know - either way - either by commenting to this post or via email at prsurfphoto@yahoo.com.

I would love to write more about the Maria experience, but I feel like it's old news and nobody is interested. Thanks for your voice, for your opinion.

NOW August 11 Scuba Diving

It was like something from a si-fi disaster movie. You know, one of those where the heroes are standing, watching storm roll in, unstoppable, probably devastating.

Four of us were diving at Natural, swimming along at about 35 feet. The sun was shining, it was beautiful. Up ahead, right where we were going. the water turned dark, ominous, almost black. The sunshine we were swimming in was completely swallowed up.

We reached the edge of the darkness and looked up. The sun was totally eclipsed by a huge floating raft of sargassum.

It was a strange, slightly unnerving experience, but one of the coolest things I ever seen underwater.

After a bad two year stint for diving, bubbles are starting to look up. I've found some new people to dive with so I'm not as dependent on just a few. I'm also gaining confidence leading dives. So far everybody I've taken out has come back. We've mostly done Natural and Crashboat but we plan to expand to other sites soon.

This is one of two albums of scuba photos I posted recently on Flickr: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmkGyCkm
Have a gander at the photos. And enjoy!