Wild Blue Yonder

so i sit in paradise…a week has gone by…more…i cant remember how long ive been here. my crew left me today and suddenly the “irma” of activitiy is over. the first few days were surreal. i awoke the first morning and had to pinch myself. here i am in paradise…somehow ive managed to get my home here too…wow what an unreal sensation. we hit the dock for a stroll along the malecon. holy... the whole bloody walkway is pitching and rolling. the sensation is like when you close your eyes and spin around and then open them up and you cant stand up…its kinda like that except you dont actually fall down. the sun shines thru the fog and land is like some foreign place. its not the reliably stable platform it once was. i look for a hand hold when im at the urinal cuz the whole bathroom is pitching and rolling. its taken me a week or more but the land is gradually becoming stable. the sidewalks are once again terra firma and im not staggering like a drunken sailor anymore.
weve already met some very nice people on the dock and a friendly atmosphere is all around. each night we meet some new friends and we have happy hour on a different boat every night and we all have something in common and that is that weve come from some other place to be here. its like we are old friends. we met some canucks from prince george. prince george?? what the hell are they doing here? well i guess its just as strange that a landlocked albertan is here to. americans, hawaiians, phillipinos, grecians, canadians, mexicans, …we are all here and its like a family already. i love this place already even though im kinda stuck at the dock till the hurricanes season dies. i never really counted on that but then i just got focused on getting here. there is so much to think about and surely you will miss some detail that the other cruisers thought of and now i feel like an idiot. hahahaha. anyway im trying not to stress about it. this is the new life.
i rode my bike down miles of beach today and boy did that feel good. its only been a couple of weeks of no riding and already my legs are weak. so i will try and incorporate a ride every day and get my biking legs back.
it doesnt take long and im back to the “projects”. there is always something to do and the pitching and rolling trip down here has shown some “snags” that need to be addressed. then there is the salt water from the dock. dock water…it supposed be potable isnt it? anyway i filled up my tanks before i asked that question. ooops... brackish water in the tanks….more couplers , and hoses, and clamps, and filters, combined with lots of sign language and broken spanish/english, and a couple days later i have a charcoal filtered system plumbed into the water maker making clean fresh water from dock water. the jobs never end. and now that laurie and moe are gone i also have to do the all of the cooking and cleaning and daily living chores. jeez it was nice to have crew!! i love those folks. they are amazing people and im so grateful they were with me for this journey. it would have been so much more difficult without them. i cant thank them enough and now they are gone. i feel just a little alone and far from home but then that was surely going to be one of the "cruising life” dilemas. i dont think you ever really can imagine all of the things in your life that change. i just had this ideal vision about how great this life would be and so far it is…just many things i didnt think about. i miss my family and friends but this typing is kinda helping as im just letting it go and im hoping that said family and freinds will get the love im sending. anyway the sun goes away early here. it seems very late even though its not. im gonna hafta get used to the sun setting around the same time every night, winter ,and summer. i seem to end up in bed very early and of course that means up early in the morning too.
ive tried to upload some pics but with limited success. im not sure if its the lame internet, the lame blog provider, or the lame operator, but photos are proving to be difficult. i will keep trying and may or may not have success, but you will know…. if you see pics. hehehehe
oh ya i forgot to mention…the sun here is soooo much hotter. i left a sail bag out in the sun since i got here and in one week it has already faded from a bright red to a dull orange. guess the lazy days of taking the sun for granted are over. i was walking the dock the other day and spotted a boat with a 2 gallon pump jug of sunscreen tied on deck…..i get it now.