Our Angel

Somewhere in all the 9/11 and other hoopla, we kinda lost track that our granddaughter Angel started the first grade this month. There is a lot of her daddy in that beautiful face! Smart, angelic, with just a bit of devilment thrown in for spice.

Thanks, Steve, for sending us the pictures of Angel going off to school.

Hurricane Katia

Fortunately, Hurricane Katia took a pretty hard right turn and passed us by. In her wake she left some great surfing, especially for this early in the season. I managed to catch a great morning session at Middles Beach. (Since then I've managed to be in the wrong place every time.)

Pro surfer Jamie O'Brien, normally a big-wave surfer from Hawaii, was catching huge air on the Middles waves. Local surfers were catching stand-up barrels. You can see all the best from this session on our web site, www.puertoricosurfphoto.com or a condensed set on Flickr.

I've heard Wilderness has been good the last two days so I'm going to head there to see if there's any early morning action.

9/11

Long before 9/11 became synonymous with horror and tragedy it was a date of celebration. The love of my life was born on this date.

She is my world. Her example, every day, makes me want to be a better person. Her joy and sometimes-silliness inspires me to laugh. Her humanity and love of others inspires me to care even more. Her love of family brings us and keeps us closer together. Being with her, sharing our lives together, has made me everything that I am.

So, while the rest of the country - and maybe the world - is remembering the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I am celebrating, quietly, without her, because she is still with her family in Ohio. But celebrating none-the-less.

old friends

The trip back to the States was of course about Elaine, her family, and celebrating her father's life. There was one happy personal sidebar for me though: we got to have lunch with two friends from my college days who live in northern Ohio. Given what our lives were like back then, it's a wonder we remembered each other. Once started, the memories just flowed. I had some great time with these guys.

Dan, Keith - I can't tell how great it was to see you guys. There's a whole long list of people I wish could have made our little mini-reunion (Ali, are you listening?).

Anyway, let's don't wait 35 years to meet again. Or if we do, let's hope we're all still here for it. And remember it!

Love you guys!

Of fathers

Elaine's father, Edwin "Ted" Kumler, died Friday. August 26. He suffered health issues for last two years or so. He just started with Hospice care when he passed away in his sleep.

Last September, part of our trip north for the kite festival in Milwaukee included time in Ohio spent with Ted. It was a good visit. Although we didn't know for sure it would be the last time we saw him, we knew it was a good possibility.

Ted was a big man, a dominating presence in his family. At various times he had a falling our with each of his four children. But Elaine's sister Amy and her family were close by and spent a lot of time with him. Elaine went north for a time to be with him and to give Amy a break from the constant care he required. Their brother Phil traveled back several times from his home in Oregon. As he put it, "X-number of dollars for plane fare, Y-number of hours traveling, reconnecting with my father - priceless!"

Rest in Peace, Ted. You are missed already.

As we gathered for the Ted's memorial and celebration, I realized a new month turned over while I wasn't looking. It suddenly occurred to me It was September 1, my father's birthday. He always joked his birth date was easy to remember - it was the date World War II started. (Hitler launched his military invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, my father's fifteenth birthday.)

My father was killed in an automobile accident in California in 1982. My brother-in-law Phil's comment about reconnecting with his father really struck home. I've always felt there was so much unfinished business between me and my father, so much that needed to be said and wasn't. And now there is no chance of it, at least not in this world. I am haunted, not so much by his ghost as by the knowledge of that unfinished business. Maybe that is his ghost.

Happy 87th birthday, Dad. I miss you.

Huracan Irene

(Did you know our word "hurricane" comes from a Taino word, "huracan?")

We have weathered our first hurricane. Irene passed over us Sunday night and Monday morning. packing 75 mile an hour winds. Irene slammed into the east end of the island as a tropical storm but strengthened into a Cat 1 hurricane as she passed over the island.

We spent most of Sunday moving things, lashing stuff down so it wouldn't blow. Our efforts paid off because I can't see where anything blew except for some palm fronds from an 80-foot tall tree. The new bar came through it famously - no leaks, no damage. I'm sure glad we put the hurricane cables on the roof though.

For reasons we can't explain - but are forever grateful for - we did not lose electricity or water. Between 800,000 and 1,000,000 people - 25% of the island population - did lose electric power and water. Many still don't have it back as of today, Tuesday.

My biggest worry was rain and flooding. At one point they were predicting 10-20 inches of rain. Fortunately we didn't get anywhere near that much. In fact, we've gotten a lot more rain since Irene passed than we did as she went over, again unlike the eastern third of the island which got hammered.

We were incredibly fortunate. Irene veered north and skirted the Dominican Republic and quickly grew to a Cat 2 out over the open water. Predictions now are that she will be a Cat 3 going over the Bahamas and maybe Cat 4 by the time she slams into the U.S. East Coast. We hope our East Coast friend stay safe.

We're glad our first encounter with a hurricane wasn't any worse than this. With (lots of) luck we won't have another close encounter for a long time.

Vietnam Memorial

When we went to Washington, D.C., for the Manchester United-Barcelona match, we spent part of Saturday touring some of the memorials around the Mall. I finally got to see the Vietnam Memorial, to me the most moving, the most touching of the war memorials.

For one thing, this was "our" war. In many ways it defined my generation. It was the defining action of Lyndon Johnson's presidency, a presidency that should have been remembered for desegregation and efforts to combat poverty. The ignominious end of the war should have been the defining moment for the Nixon presidency but his later lunacy upstaged even that.

Partly the Vietnam memorial is the most moving, the most intense because it is the most personal. You cannot escape it. You cannot look away. All those names. Somewhere on that wally there is the name of someone you knew. A friend. A relative. A classmate. Those are real people. Other memorials with their statues, no matter how realistic the statues, are abstractions, representations. There is nothing abstract about the Vietnam memorial. These are the names of real sons and daughters, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters whose deaths left a hole in real families. The Wall never lets us forget that.



And The Wall never lets us escape our own responsibility, our own culpability, for the war. Our own faces reflected amongst the names of the dead in the polished marble surface puts us in the middle of the tragedy. Regardless of which side you were on - against it or for it - we were all part of the horror. We are all responsible for those names on the wall. There is no "us" and "them." There is only us.

Somehow we haven't seemed to learn that lesson. The horror continues only now it's in the desert instead of the jungle. And we are all still responsible.

The new Ola Lola's is open!

We celebrated three weeks of construction and remodeling last night when the "new" Ola Lola's opened. "Mas techo, mas seco" (more roof, more dry). Fortunately we didn't have to test the new roof. It was a beautiful evening. Both new decks got rave reviews from everyone but the locals on the new east deck (left in the picture above) are already talking expansion. The new bigger space inside the bar is amazing. Two of us worked in and out of there all night and didn't run into each other once. The new windows worked brilliantly - lots more window space so even when it was crowded people weren't standing shoulder to shoulder four deep trying to get a beer. The angle window in the front has morphed from being THE window to essentially a service window. It worked really really well.

I have to say, working the new space , besides all the extra room, the thing I like best is the new SINK! We now have a real honest-to-god three-compartment bar sink. It makes taking care of glassware so much easier.

We want a huge shout-out to the crew that made this happen:

Start with David Pfaff, golf course designer extraordinaire. It was his understanding and rendering of the vision of Ola Lola's that got all this started;

Elizabeth Prysgoda-Montgomery - She took David's ideas and put them on paper. She guided and focused our thinking and kept us on track as we designed Ola Lola's;

The Comacho brothers, Chino, Andre, Luis, Pedro, and Edwin - They took the design and made it the reality that is standing today. Everyone is amazed at how quickly the construction was completed. "This just doesn't happen in Puerto Rico" is a consistent comment. I amend that to "anywhere!" I've never seen a construction project go this smoothly and on time anywhere.

Our own crew, Rosa, Pichi, Dotti - Rosa knew of Comacho brothers and brought us together. We literally could not do this without them.

The ladies of TAFY Arts: Pat, Patti, Kelda, Rosie, Nan - Their creativity is one of the brightest shiniest parts of the new Ola Lola's. But that's a story for another day.

TS Emily

Tropical Storm Emily passed about 150 miles or so south of la isla yesterday. Fortunately all we got was a little rain. And I really do mean a little. I didn't even have to pump out the yard or the corral. It's muddy but there is no standing water. Here's hoping she doesn't hit Haiti too hard. They just don't need anymore damage. The current track predictions take the storm mostly west of Haiti, across eastern Cuba and on to the Bahamas. That said, there is still quite a lot of rain in the system and we will be under the cloud cover extending out from the center at least through most of today.

Meanwhile work continues on the "new" Ola Lola's as we get ready for our "soft" reopening on Friday. There will be lots of details and little thing done to make it work for quite a while. For now, we are really happy with it!

Dude, where's my bar?

Over the past three weeks great changes have been wrought at Ola Lola's. We began making some long-needed updates.

We added a new deck next to the barport and a new deck east of the bar. We put a new roof over everything. Then we tore down the existing Ola Lola's structure and roof and built a new bar structure. There's lots of finish work to do but we will be open this weekend.

Next week we're building new bathrooms.

I say "we" like we're doing any of the actual work. Not so much. We have four great local guys, brothers actually, doing the work for us. They are awesome carpenters. No one can believe how quickly they are working, how fast they are getting things done. They are among the best workers I've ever seen anywhere. And they seem to enjoy their work; they are having fun. That makes the whole project more fun for us.

It seems like Ola Lola's is getting bigger but only a little bit. Our goal wasn't to expand, to get more seats, but to get more seats under roof so it's more comfortable when it rains. We also needed to widen the bar. The odd wedge shape made it very difficult to work in, especially for two people. There was very little storage space. Now the bar is wider with more windows and more space for barstools. It will be interesting to see how we and our guests use the space. (One thing I learned as a theater set designer is people never use a space exactly as you envisioned they will.)

The new space is beautiful, amazing, but still has all of the laid-back atmosphere and guerrilla architecture of the original. We can't wait to get in it and start welcoming guests.

Manchester United vs. Barcelona

Okay, I know I promised news days ago but things got a little out of hand. And then I left for Washington, D.C. to see Manchester United play FC Barcelona in a pre-season friendly. It was a rematch (of sorts) of last year's Champions' League final. This time ManU won.

I went for the weekend with two great friends and great soccer fans and we had a blast! It wasn't the best soccer match (nobody really expected a preseason match would be) but the atmosphere in the stadium was incredible. Nearly 82,000 people in FedEx Stadium, the largest crowd ever to see a soccer match in the U.S.

We had a chance to visit some of the monuments on the National Mall but our sightseeing was cut short by the heat. Fortunately for us it cooled down - from 110 degrees on Friday to only 95 on Saturday.

It was a rush trip - we left Friday and came back Sunday - but we had a fabulous time. Most likely the only time I will ever get to see either of those teams play live.

More news tomorrow.

So where we been this time?

Ah, that is a question, a question for tomorrow.

Today is about KAP. I missed World Wide KAP Week in May. I missed KAPping a beach on the 4th of July. I was determined to KAP Jobos beach this weekend.

Today (July 25) is Constitution Day here in PR. (We don't have an Independence Day; this is the next best thing.) Constitution Day weekend is the last big summer party weekend before school starts in August. Beaches are packed, roads are jammed. (We celebrate Labor Day as a holiday but it's not as big a deal here as it is in the States.)

This is Playa Jobos at about 1:30 in the afternoon. It's not as crazy as on the 4th of July but still pretty packed. It was crazy enough that by the time I left about 2:00 the police closed the road through Jobos and routed all the traffic up the hill and over the top through Isabela pueblo.

This was my first KAP session in four months and it was wild and crazy. Lots of curious people around, the kite and KAP rig swinging wildly in the 20+ knot gusty winds. It was the maiden flight for my "new" KAP camera, a Canon A3300 I got to replace the A640 camera that was stolen. All things considered it acquitted itself very well. Looking forward to many more KAP sessions with it.

Night snorkel

A tiny sliver of moon hung in the southwest sky as we walked down the beach. The last of the setting sun was hidden behind a low cloud bank on the horizon. Still, there was still plenty of light to see our way.

We slipped into the surprisingly cool ocean, put on masks, snorkels and fins and headed across the sand-bottom pool to the reef. In the not-quite-dark we didn't turn on our dive lights, preferring to see at what might be there in the dusk, things that the sudden bright light might scare away.

The reef, so familiar in the daylight, is a completely different world at night. Different creatures are out and familiar creatures behave differently. Sea urchins move across the reef rather than anchoring like barnacles in crevices in the coral. Ocean surgeonfish and blue tang, disturbed from their sleep, dart away from the light, faster than we ever see them swim in the daylight.

The reef itself looks different, brought in to sharp relief of light and shadow by the small, highly directional dive lights. Familiar coral formations look radically different and totally unfamiliar. Because our visibility is limited to the range of our dive lights, we tend to look at the underwater world in micro rather than macro. We shine our lights into cracks and holes and crevices in the reef that we might not even notice in daylight. Brittle starfishes and octopuses are more visible in their holes at night because colors show differently, brighter, under the artificial light of the dive lights.

We don't get to night snorkel often but we love it when we do. The July full moon is on the 15th (Saturday when Ola Lola's is open) so it will be nearly full on the 14th (Thursday) and the 18th (Tuesday). Hopefully the skies will be clear and we can get in the water then.

Fourth of July

This was our fifth Fourth in Puerto Rico. In past years I've gone out on the holiday to KAP (Kite Aerial Photography) the crowds on a near-by beach. I didn't make it this year.

Saturday and Sunday the weather was crappy - cloudy, gusty winds, and small crowds on the beaches. That's good for the beaches but not for KAPping. Monday, the Fourth, was a beautiful day but after running some errands, I chose to snorkel into Blue Hole on a rumor a manatee might be there. Then we hung out on the beach with with Kai, Amy and Miguel. (Kennedy is away visiting her other grandparents in Michigan.) Then of course Ola Lola's was open in the afternoon and evening.


I missed KAPping but we had a great day.

Happy birthday, Kennedy

Our little beach girl is FOUR! Happy birthday, Boo!

Another yola on the beach

We woke up Sunday morning to the racket of a helicopter hovering just outside our window. Actually it was over the field next to us but it sounded like it was right outside our window. Obviously a police helicopter, it hovered and circled the field and flew up and down the beach for more than an hour searching for something. Or someone.

A yola (a small boat) had landed on our beach during the night and the police and Border Patrol were looking for Dominican refugees. By the time I walked down to the beach any refugees were long gone. Only a few Border Patrol agents and the helicopter remained.


The boat apparently came ashore at high tide because there it sat, high and dry on the rocks. Unlike many of these boats, this one was in good shape. No holes in the hull meant it came over rather than through the reef.

This was a pretty small boat compared to some of the others we've seen. We haven't heard any numbers of people that might have been on board but it couldn't have been too many. Judging by the amount of gasoline left in plastic cans on the boat it must have been a pretty fast crossing.

There also wasn't the usual debris - clothes, water containers, toothbrushes, shoes, children's toys, backpacks - we saw when other boats landed. That said, a friend who owns property by the cliff said he found clothes left behind as the boat people ran up the hill away from the beach.

Monday evening the tide came in and lifted to boat free of the rocks. At Ola Lola's we heard the boat was drifting west with the wind and current past VillaTropical. We don't know if a fisherman managed to snag it and haul it away or if it drifted out to sea past Villa Montaña. Whatever happened to it, by Monday morning it was gone.

No yola to burn on the beach. No yola left to break up on the beach and rocks and reef. No pieces of fiberglass stuck in the reef. The yola and all the people it vanished.

It was like yola had never been there at all.

San Juan Roadtrip

We recently had to go to San Juan to take some paperwork so Elaine can get her Speech-Language Pathologist's license her in PR. She has two college degrees and has taught at the university level. She received her Masters degree with honors. She has (and has given the licensing people) copies of her high school, undergrad, and graduate transcripts.

The junta, the group that oversees licensing, denied her application for a provisional license (until she takes the test in October) because she did not show and provide a copy of her high school diploma! Are you kidding me?!?!?! Apparently they weren't. So Elaine's sister dug her hs diploma out of a box in her basement in Cleveland and sent it to us. All is well now - we think. The junta meets on the 30th and we should know the first week of July.

Her high school diploma? Are you kidding me?

There was some fun in the trip though.


Taking a tip from the Japanese, where horizontal space is at a premium, this carfair along Carr. 18 in San Juan went vertical to display cars.

On the way home we saw not one but two Ford F150 pickups with three horses in back. I hate to say "only in Puerto Rico" but I've never seen horses transported in the beds of pickups. I have heard it's not all that uncommon in West Texas. People, especially those from the States, kinda freak out about horses in pickup trucks but for the most part, the horses seem okay with it. And We're fine with it. As long as the horses aren't driving.

Noche de San Juan

One of the biggest party nights of the year is the unofficial holiday Noche de San Juan (Night of St. John). Originally the holiday was to celebrate St. John the Baptist baptizing Jesus. The tradition is that if you go to the ocean and throw yourself backwards into the water three times, you will have good luck in the coming year.

We celebrated early. Elaine took a sunset ride on Chocolate and then we had dinner with friends on the deck at Villa Tropical.

We headed home early because in the current reality this is a night for camping (illegally) and all-night partying on the beaches. Beaches such as Jobos are as busy overnight as they are during the day. That's all well and good. The sad part is most of these beaches have few or no sanitary facilities and too many people simply disrespect the beauty of la isla.

And the next morning...

We just hate to see our beautiful beaches like this so we tend to avoid these big summer party weekends and celebrate quietly our own way.

Scuba diving at Shacks

Shacks Beach - the beach right in front of Villa Tropical and just down from us - is one of the best dive sites on this side of the island. It's a shore dive which means we just walk in to the ocean, swim out a little way across Blue Hole, and then drop into a beautiful reef.

The "outside reef" - outside Blue Hole - is a "finger-and-groove" reef. The reef forms canyons that we swim through. It reminds me of films of fly-bys through canyons in the American Southwest: swimming along 30'-40' underwater with these walls of coral soaring above us.

The entire reef is like Swiss cheese, riddled with holes and ledges, some you can swim through, some you can swim under. There are three tunnels through the outer reef that we use to back into Blue Hole. In fact there are tours of the tunnels and swim-throughs in and around Blue Hole.

A KAP (Kite Aerial Photography) shot of the reef at Shacks Beach. Blue Hole is at the top left. The inner shallow reef takes up most of the photo. The deeper outer reef is to the right.

Lately, Darryl has been taking a new route out of Blue Hole back to the inner reef. The "old" route was more direct but came through a kinda tight space. The new route, part of which is pictured above, is up and over and through several different passages before coming out on top of the inner reef.

I love diving out there. We wait all winter for the calmer flatter waters of summer so we can dive Shacks. During the winter - surf season - Shacks is usually to rough to dive. That's when we dive "around the corner" on the west side at Natural and Crashboat.

But now it's summer and time to dive Shacks!

It's my birthday - it's my birthday

Well, it was my birthday Thursday. What a great day! I've had some wonderful birthday celebrations over the years, but this absolutely one of the best whole birthday days I've ever had.

We - Elaine, Darryl and I - started the day with a beautiful, relaxed dive at Shacks - flat seas, no surge, very little current. One odd thing on this dive: what current there was was running "backwards," from west to east, instead of the usual east to west. Not a big deal for us diving but noteworthy for its strangeness.


Elaine and I had brunch at a new little place up on Carr. 110 call "My Sweet Place." They specialize in waffles, pancakes and cakes, but they don't open until 11:00 am. That struck us as a little odd but it was perfect timing for us. And I have to say, they served the best cup of coffee I've had in Puerto Rico. The beans are from a small coffee plantation called Hacienda San Pedro. We bought a can of beans to try at home.

At sunset we went down the road to the Eclipse restaurant at Villa Montaña for an oceanside dinner at the invitation of the owner. They set up a table for us right on the beach. We've always said that Eclipse had the best setting and ambiance of any restaurant around. And our dinner - tuna tar-tar and tempura shrimp for starters, then grilled kangaroo medium rare and fresh bass, topped off with key lime pie and chocolate mousse for desert - was unbelievable. We'd never tasted kangaroo before. It's a mild red meat, similar to but markedly different from beef. The service, which at times over the years has been suspect at Eclipse, we're very please to say was excellent. Thank you, Alain, Yosset, Maria, Giovanni, and of course Chef Jeremy for a wonderful wonderful birthday dinner.
I got to talk to, or at least had birthday messages from all of the kids at sometime during the day. Just as we sat down to dinner Amy and Miguel and Kennedy (who are visiting family on the mainland) called and sang "Happy Birthday." Then Kennedy got on by herself and sang the Spanish version of "happy birthday." I cannot begin to tell you how touching that was.

For the record, I am not 29 or 25 or celebrating "the 35th anniversary of my 25th birthday." I just turned 60 and I'm damned proud of it! There are those (me included sometimes) that never thought I'd still be here. But I am and I'm glad and I'm lovin' my life!

Thanks to everyone for all the amazing birthday wishes! It was a great start to my 61st year.