Part II
Page IV
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
Lewis Carroll
December 12th
Friday, our last full day on St John
Got up, made coffee, fed Bananaquits. OK, my work for today is done. I checked our email and found a notification from American Airlines warning of delays and cancellations due to inclement weather in the Mid-Atlantic. Inclement weather in the form of Hurricane Hanna which seems to be drawing a beeline on our home on the Chesapeake Bay! They are offering to change weather affected passengers’ flights free of charge. Our flight is one that they feel might be impacted. Hummmmm, what to do, what to do. Let me think, stay an extra day on St John, or, risk getting stuck in the Miami airport for who knows how long. Yes, even I can figure that one out. So now this is not our last day on St John! WAHOOOOO! Sorry boss, can’t come in. There’s hurricanes everywhere and we are stuck here on this miserable, hell hole called St John. No really boss, I am hating it here! I want to come home, honest, but we have been warned! The good news for us is that no one is expected to be renting Reef Madness until Sunday, so we do have a place to stay, a really great place (if I do say so myself).
Dave Carlson, the guy who is going to build us a fountain (I hope - this will make fountain builder number three), is coming up to RM to take a look at what he is in for. He showed us a villa he had built with a stone fountain and I must say the villa was nicely done. It was apparent that Dave paid a lot of attention to details with this building. However, we weren’t wild about the stone fountain, not that it was poorly built but, we thought it didn’t fit in with its surroundings. So today, we want to make darn sure everyone is on the same page with our fountain. I just have a bad feeling about this. Perhaps it has to do with all the other conversations we have had in the past about what we wanted that, well, no one listened to. That is also why we are building this fountain one year after the villa was finished (oh yeah, money had something to do with that as well). So Dave took a look and we had him repeat back to us several times what we wanted. Dave says he has his own stone mason that will work on this project and he believes his stone mason is the best around. Oh good, another stone mason to support. I can feel my veins bleeding green already. I wonder if this one likes to go on vacation. Perhaps he has college age kids! “Yes, we would be happy to put your kids through college. We actually have a lot of experience with this sort of thing!”
December 15th
Friday: Part Deux
Well, now that we have an extra day to spend doing very busy, important stuff, I think a nap is in order before beach time prevails. I will just close my eyes for a moment while resting in this pool side recliner. ZZZZZZ, what’s that noise? We have visitors. Who can it be? Oh, Josephine’s garden crew. She mentioned to us that this is the time of year to trim back the vegetation before the tropical storm force winds cause damage. A little snip here, a little snip there…wait a minute. That’s a whole lot more than a little snip! Where did the bougainvilleas go? They butchered them; cut the crap out of them. My poor plants. These guys are worse than the donkeys! Oh No!!!! Bring back my beautiful vibrant color and thick vegetation. Do these guys know what they are doing? My landscape looks like it did over a year ago. I suppose heavy rains and hurricanes can destroy a hillside garden. But wow, this is really something. They should have waited until we left. We would not have been any the wiser. I hope this isn’t etched into my memory to come back to haunt me like some sort of post traumatic garden stress syndrome. My future is now uncertain. I might have to be in therapy for years after watching this savage attack on innocent Reef Madness shrubs. Oh the humanity…
Before
After!
ARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!
December 17th
Friday: Part III
Well, since the garden crew saw fit to piss off the Bananaquits and Hummingbirds, I became motivated to do the same. No, not piss off the birds, but do some shrub trimming of my own on Seagrape Hill. As that I am the very awe inspiring President of the Seagrape Hill Landowners Association and take my responsibilities quite seriously, I am, with my very own two hands, going to attempt to trim back the brush which has been obscuring our trendy and informational Seagrape Hill entrance sign. The weeds on this island grow like weeds and our sign gets devoured by native flora regularly. Perhaps as President of the SHLA I should pass an ordinance requiring people driving up the hill to carry a weed whacker (I think they are called machetes here) and give the offending vines a thwack while passing by. In the mean time, I guess the buck stops with the old prez. So here I go. You know I think this sign was trimmed about a day or two ago. Things sure do grow fast here. Maybe there’s some hope for our bougainvillea.
I also want to stop in at VIVA and ask them about hurricane preparedness. I work on Capitol Hill donchano and emergency preparedness keeps a whole lot of people employed. Yes, your tax dollars at work. I think if it is good enough for Uncle Sam its good enough for Reef Madness. I want it by the numbers. I want steps. I want procedures. I want lists. I want protocol. I want hurricanes to go somewhere else. Just how does VIVA prepare the pricey island real estate in their care during hurricanes, tsunamis, pestilence, famine and plague? What are their procedures; inquiring minds want to know! I trust VIVA. I trust them more than FEMA. What am I saying, I would trust Carl Spackler the dim-witted groundskeeper in Caddy Shack more than FEMA…but I digress. I want the facts and I am on a mission. You thought perchance I had forgotten about hurricanes? Never! Once again I am on a hurricane watch. Unfortunately this time it is for a blow on the Chesapeake Bay and I doubt VIVA can do anything for me there. You know, we have no storm shutters (at least none that actually do something but look pretty) we have no tie downs or special wind rigging. I am sure there is no evacuation route (well actually there is only one way in and one way out of Shady Side). The good news (I think) is that we will be here on island for Hanna’s visit to the Chesapeake. Guess I had better call my neighbors and see if they are busy doing anything more important than hauling all our outdoor stuff inside. I am sure that helping those of us who are lollygagging in the Caribbean is on top of their list of stuff to get done immediately.
So my meeting with VIVA was enlightening. I now know that getting a villa geared up for an advancing hurricane is no easy task. Something tells me that the stuff they do doesn’t get done for free. I called our neighbors, Cliff and Ellen, and they had already been over to our house to haul stuff indoors. And they did it for free! They are even going to move my car to high ground if need be (my last car was assassinated by Hurricane Isabel five years ago). I think I will petition Rome to make Cliff and Ellen the patron saints of neighbors. Do you think the pope will care that we are not Catholic?
December 23rd
Friday: Part Fourthish
Where did the time go? It is Happy Hour and time to warm up the blender. Dinner tonight will be a simple fare (compared with last night and chef Vicki’s banquet) Tonight will be vegan night at Reef Madness serving a pasta with a simple marinara sauce. We turned on some old favorite classic tunes that we haven’t heard in a long time. The Duane Allman/Eric Clapton collaboration on The Layla Sessions gives me goose bumps. They still sound great. Is it the surround sound that is making this old music seem new again? Is it that we have never heard this music in the tropics before? Is it the rum drinks? What? Pink Floyd (far out, dude) followed Layla, followed by Steely Dan and Jimi Hendrix, oh so cool. Have I mentioned that the sound system at RM is not half bad even if it does take an engineering degree to figure it out? (The volume control goes to 99 and anything over 45 is ah, quite loud. Last song of the night: Brown Sugar turned up to 75. The Seagrape Hill dog subjects were howling. Awesome!) They just don’t make music like this any more. Damn, I sound just like my parents! How did that happen? It’s those very same words! “ Oh that Glenn Miller. They don’t make music like that any more.” They thought our music was crap. “What Mom? You’ve heard enough of I Am the Walrus???” I think the music today sounds like crap. What is this Dr. Dre and Busta Rhymes? Rap? That’s not music. It’s déjà vu all over again. (Déjà Vu… now that was a fine album) When today’s kids grow up, their kids will be listening to “noise”. We are not supposed to like the next generation of music. Having said that, I will do a total 360 and say, I do like some of the music of Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee. I love the timeless bluesy Bessie Smith and John Lee Hooker. OK I even like some of today’s music…actually a lot of today’s music. I just won’t admit it to anyone under the age of 40. It would be against the rules of engagement for the eternal generational paradox. The universe would fold in on itself...
December 23rd
Friday Part V
Just a few more words about music in the islands: The music you hear here doesn’t necessarily sound the same as hearing it stateside. We got a note from a guest asking us about a CD of Reggae Beatles covers and where he could purchase it. I don’t know where we got it, and I too really enjoy this quirky spin on old Beatles tunes, but I do know that it sounds different listening to it in Oregon or Iowa rather than on top of Seagrape Hill. We know this from experience. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why this is . It’s the same with umbrella drinks. I love my mango rum concoctions. I love pain killers. They just don’t taste as good sitting in front of a fireplace gazing out over a snowy landscape. Why is this? We bought a CD we had heard on Tortola (this was during our pre St John days) and it somehow lost a lot of its appeal listening to it in Shady Side. I have no idea why that was. Bob Marley sounds great in Oregon, Iowa, and Maryland. Why should others fair differently depending on locale? Tis another unsolvable Caribbean mystery and my brain is in island mode. The only mystery I need to solve is how to get this magically appearing salsa stain out of my best dress T-shirt.
January 5th
Ok it is Saturday, our for sure really and truly last final day on St John (unless another hurricane sneaks up on us). I just made some coffee from our too cool for words coffee maker. We have had some reports that on occasion our coffee pot throws a temper tantrum and spews coffee all over the counters, floors etc. OK that is not as bad as exploding wontons (November 17th) on the ceiling, but first thing in the morning the last thing one wants to face is an exploding coffee pot. I mean, ya need coffee before you can face stuff like this right? Oh yes, we had heard the stories about exploding coffee pots but of course that could never happen to us. We are too smart; we are the villa owners; we bought the damn coffee pot in the first place. How could we possibly screw up something as simple as making coffee? Yep, we smugly pooh-poohed those silly people who had exploding coffee experiences for the fools that they were…until the pot exploded on us. It took us three tries before we got it right and the worst part of it all was we never figured out what we did differently on try number three that we hadn’t done on tries one and two. We apologize for all the snide thoughts we had. To our hapless RM coffee pot victims, we are mortified; we are shamed! I blame it all on Jumbies, of course.
January 23rd
We called our neighbors to check on the weather in Shady Side. “It’s pissin’ rain up here. Things are flying around all over the place. We moved everything indoors and if need be, we will move your car to high ground.” (Not sure if I should mention to them that everything is Caribbean perfect down here). So when we do get home, we will find our BBQ in the living room, our patio plants all over the family room, our outdoor table and chairs wherever they will fit. After an endless day of travel we will have yet more work cut out for us. I guess it’s better that than the alternative of dead plants strewn helter-skelter (another great song) all over the porch, the BBQ laying at the bottom of the pool and the furniture never to be seen or heard from again.
Another disconcerting thing that happened this morning, shortly after the coffee pot explosion, was finding water seeping out from under the sink. Brown water filled with coffee grounds was pouring out onto the floor. Hummm, not good. When we checked under the sink, we noticed something odd, a one inch gap between the two connecting pipes. ONE INCH GAP!!!! The VIVA maintenance guy should have seen this, should have figured out that something was not quite right. Not only was water pouring out from the drain to the sink’s non-connected pipe on the left side, but water was also escaping from the drain to the smaller sink on the right side (at least that one was still attached). To make matters worse, I show in VIVA’s monthly statement reconciliations that the maintenance guy had fixed this same sink two previous times, and we have been billed for this TWO OTHER TIMES! What did this maintenance guy think would happen? The pipes were going to magically knit together like a broken bone? OK, we have had enough. We will have a chat with VIVA and tell them we want Maintenance Pete to take over the total maintenance on Reef Madness. No one can treat our RM in such a shoddy fashion, no one. She is our baby. GRRRRRR. We have a lot of faith in Pete.
A dip in the pool to cool down (in more than one way) is in order. Here comes Alice the pool girl. Two minutes earlier and she would have had an eye full (sometimes we forget to put on our suits donchano; ok, we never put on suits). This reminds me of the time when we first started coming to St John and while unpacking at our rented villa, I discovered I forgot to bring along my skivvies. OK, no problem, I would just run out to some clothing store on St John and buy new ones. After checking every clothing store on St John, I was informed by a longtime resident: “Hell no one wears underwear down here, so why sell it?” At first I felt a bit, uhhh, well… a bit exposed when I took up the sans briefs island tradition. Now, I have become a shameless pagan native.
We received a call from Lewis asking us if we wanted to join him in celebrating Stephen’s birthday at Asolare tonight. Asolare? Hum…I wonder if I have any clean tee-shirts. Perhaps one that doesn’t have some crass beer advertisement, or Rastafarian recreational references. Asolare, oh dear. Oh well, for Stephen’s birthday, I’ll clean myself up a little. Asolare it will be, but I better stop at an ATM first. This is the second time we have been to Asolare, and I am aware that it isn’t cheap. We had drinks in the bar and wine at dinner. Beside Stephen & Lewis, joining us in the celebration was Stephen’s lady friend, Debbie and Compass Rose’s Wally*. My dinner was so-so (my fault entirely). The waitress tried to talk me out of my choice diplomatically stating that there were more popular choices that she could recommend. I wasn’t to be dissuaded. I should have listened. Every other meal at our table was splendid (I got to sample some of everything because I sniveled and whined so much!) So all in all I did have a good meal…or rather, meals. Imagine our surprise when the check came, Lewis grabbed it and paid. He refused any attempt to help pay for or even leave a tip for this costly dinner. Thank you Lewis. Happy Birthday, Steve. So our day that started with exploding coffee pots and broken drain pipes ended on a high note. Tomorrow will be hell, but right now, I’m smiling.
*note Wally has since moved on to Island Blues
January 28
Ok, before we leave our island, we have one last subject to talk about. Our dearest, most loyal of employees at Reef Madness is sliding into retirement. He will come by and say hi now and again, but his health is in decline and his job needs to go to a younger applicant. Yes, Rumsfeld has retired and in his place a younger, healthier sommelier will be joining our staff. Please join me in welcoming…ah…what is his name? It is hard to name someone with such sophistication and urbane qualities.
Sunday, travel day…or as they said in old Rome, “We who are about to die, salute you”. Have I ever mentioned that I hate travel days (to and from) and going back is always unbearable? I am sure that I am not alone in this sentiment. The body language among those sad-sacks boarding the passenger ferry going to St Thomas is quite different from those stepping off the ferry onto St John soil. The regulars to St John refer to the steps from the ferry dock to the St Thomas bound passenger ferry as “the walk of woe”. Indeed it is. One would think there’s a guillotine at that journey’s end.
We were late taking off from Cyril King and of course when we got to Miami, they had no available gates for us to taxi to (I think I have mentioned before about how there is an international gate shortage among all the airports of the world. I am sure it is a contrived shortage brought about by evil doers and oil companies and perhaps even right wing conspirators and the left wing Bolsheviks!) At any rate, we missed our connecting flight and every succeeding flight out is fully booked. There are not even any flights on other airlines with seats available. So we begged and pleaded to get two open seats on a flight going to Baltimore. Of course our car is in D.C and there is no easy way to get to D.C from Baltimore at midnight. I suppose if necessary we could get a taxi to D.C. ($$$) We also called a special number for American Airlines frequent flyers to see if someone higher up the food chain could help us out and stick us on standby to National Airport. No luck on the first flight out to National, but there is a possibility we might make it out on the last flight to D.C. So we have confirmed seats to Baltimore and are on standby to D.C. How ever do these airlines keep anything straight? At the eleventh hour, they got us seats on the plane to D.C. Ok, so which city will our luggage show up in? Upon our arrival at National Airport, it became obvious that we were where we were supposed to be, but our luggage wasn’t. The baggage people said the luggage was either in Baltimore or Miami (MIA at MIA again?). At least we are in the same place as our car. I want to go home now. I am tired of airports and luggage and intercom announcements and airport food and, well…I think I am getting a bit cranky. So, home we head - sans luggage. Home is not the same when there are no four legged furry friends to greet you. The house is dark and quiet and I am not on St John anymore and life sucks.
The next day we head off to Street, Maryland (near the Pennsylvania border) to pick up our furry kids. To get to Street, we must drive right past BWI Airport, so we thought we would stop in and see if perchance our luggage made it there instead of National. No such luck. We picked up Ollie and Duffy in Street and headed back home to recheck with National Airport. Again, no luggage. We made calls for four straight days to MIA, to BWI, and to National Airports and finally decided to make a trip back to National to try and sniff out our luggage ourselves (did I mention we had leftover formerly frozen rum mix rotting in those bags? Sniffing them out could be hazardous to ones health)...and there they were, our beautiful (albeit stinky) bags. They had been there all along (since the day after we arrived) but no one bothered to check. They merely went by the wrong luggage tag information. Have I mentioned that our luggage is somewhat unique in its appearance (and now smell) and if someone had bothered to look at the abandoned suitcases they would have been able to spot ours immediately? Twenty-five feet! They would have had to get off their butts and walk twenty-five feet to spot our turtle shaped, hard sided case… And they ask me why I drink…
What to name this handsome pirate...Lucky? Spot? Rothschild? HELP!!
Have you ever been in a hurricane? Next time on this very website:
OMAR!!!
January 29
“Wrong Way Lenny”... That’s what they ended up calling the storm from November, 1999 that moved from west to east across the Caribbean, the reverse of the typical direction, and it wasn’t very funny when it cranked up to Category 4 and slammed into St. Croix. Lenny achieved mythological status not only for its unusual direction, but because it was so darned strong so late in the season. When Mother Nature kids around, sometimes she isn’t kidding around.
So when we heard in the second week of October that a disturbance had formed in an area unfavorable for development in the eastern Caribbean, we weren’t at all concerned – it couldn’t happen again, could it? Besides, after obsessing about all the storms surrounding us in September, the last thing we wanted to do was to be glued to the NHC website again. But a day or so later I peeked, and Mother Nature was winking at me again.
Computer models were now showing that the storm would get stronger, acquire the name “Omar”, and after drifting around for a couple of days, move in our general direction! Egads! By Tuesday night Omar was a hurricane, getting stronger by the hour, and according to the NHC, would pass within 5 miles of St. John sometime Wednesday night! 5 miles! With a 20 mile wide eye, that’s a direct hit! OK, now I’m getting nervous…
We were supposed to go on a drinking tour of the BVIs on Wednesday, with Ruth & Ron and Capt. John Brandi. But when Wednesday morning dawned, the skies were a steely grey, the breeze had picked up, the waves picked up, the rain picked up, our anxiety picked up and the trip was “postponed” by the prudent Captain. It was time to haul out the storm shutter braces, and figure out what the hell else we were supposed to do…
January 30
So all Wednesday morning we hauled the 2 X 4s that would hold our shutters together up from the storage room, at the same time we were storing other items in the storage room, in the Great Room and in the bedrooms. All the deck furniture, hose reels, coolers, beach chairs – anything and everything that could turn into a missile in 100 mph winds needed to be secured. This was hard work, and despite the deepening gloom, it was extremely humid and required numerous dips in the pool to cool off! All the storm shutters were closed except the ones covering the lower bedroom and side door to the Great Room.
And by early afternoon all was done. There was nothing else to do but wait. A quick check of the NHC website revealed that Omar was still on course and was now forecast to become a Cat 3 storm by the time it reached us, sometime during the middle of the night. It’s always at night you know… It’s some kind of Rule of Doom... We took a little drive around Coral Bay and it was obvious that everyone was now aware of the threat. Skinny’s was taking the awnings down. Every home and business was boarded up. The breeze was picking up and the rain, which started as a fine mist, was getting heavier and harder.
We retreated back up the hill to Reef Madness and pulled a couple of deck chairs out of the Great Room just so we could watch the scene unfold. From the guts coming down Bordeaux Mountain, a muddy stream of roiling water was pouring into Coral Bay. The road in front of the gas station was flooded preventing low centered cars passage. Skilled Coral Bay drivers knew to follow the parting water of the higher clearance vehicles that ran interference for their low slung neighbors. Our beautiful aqua-blue bay was turning an unsightly brown. This was the start of it I thought… What would this look like in the morning? Would anything still be here? The day we had planned cruising to Jost seemed years away. Later in the afternoon, the breeze and rain died down a bit. There was an eerie quietness that permeated the gloom much as if an eye of a storm was now passing over. Humid, sticky, now windless, now soundless… No bird noises, no beast noises. They know. I do not. What is happening now? What would happen later?
February 3rd
The storm protection system at Reef Madness is a good one. Secured by heavy metal braces and strong 2 x 4’s the shutters would protect our doors and windows as the concrete, steel and stone walls would protect the rest of our house. All one had to do was close everything up and leave. It would be here when we got back. Just one thing… What if you wanted to stay, to barricade yourself behind those strong armaments? We never thought of that, until Omar began bearing down on us. We wanted to stay in the lower bedroom. Everything was designed to be shut from the outside. Hmmmm… I brought some elastic ropes up from the storage room – the ones that stretch and have hooks on the end. I could hook them to the braces on the outside of the bedroom doors from the inside and under normal conditions they would keep the shutters shut. But in hurricane winds? There was some give to the ropes and I felt that if the wind got between the shutters those ropes could just snap. No, that wasn’t going to work… Hmmmm… I put on my thinking cap, stared Rumsfeld in the eye and tried to read his mind. What would Rumsfeld do… Yes – I was getting desperate. And then, BOOM – FLASH! Out of the sound system where we were cranking Abbey Road came our inspiration, and I swear Rumsfeld winked at me.
We bolted towards one of the windows and reversed the shutters, called Lewis and asked him if there was a way of removing the panes of the jalousie glass (there was!), and got out a stepstool to test our theory. We decided that Marcia was the more, ah, nimble of the two of us and would have the more active role in this maneuver. So after I went into the bedroom, she shuttered the doors and I went into the bathroom to remove the jalousie glass. From the outside, she got up on the stepstool and then “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window”, just like Lennon and McCartney had suggested to us a few moments before! We lifted the stepstool inside, pulled the reversed shutters closed, and put the 2 x 4s through the braces. Then we put the jalousie glass back in the window frame. It worked!!! Wow! We might get through this thing after all!
We reversed the process and went back out to do a final roundup of items that would go in the bedroom with us. Beer and wine for Happy Hour. Leftover steak and mashed potatoes for dinner. Cookies and Key Lime Pie for desert. We made a fresh pot of coffee in the Cuisinart thermos for the morning (we figured the power would be out and cold coffee is better than no coffee) – and tested the radio, flashlights and readied the candles. Then we sat out on our deck chairs once again to enjoy the view and watch as our day slowly turned to dusk. Coral Bay is now battened down. The boat population in the bay has been substantially diminished. Some daring souls were riding out the storm on their boats. Many have moved off to Hurricane Hole for added protection and all have doubled, tripled, even quadrupled their mooring lines as Omar approaches.
Now it was almost sunset (if you could actually see it through the gloom) and we wanted to shutter ourselves in the bedroom before dark. So one last check of the National Hurricane Center website and we’ll go inside. Uh-oh. The internet is down… And right about then the rain started picking up again. OK – time to do this thing. Back inside I went and back through the bathroom window came Marcia. Here we are – safe, snug, and ready for Omar. We hope.
February 4th
With the windows and doors shuttered, our bedroom was like a cave. But it was the nicest cave I’ve ever been marooned in! On the dresser we had a spread of cheeses and crackers (to accompany the beer and wine in the coolers), along with an assortment of emergency supplies like potato chips and peanut butter. Oh, and about 18 pounds of sugar, because if Omar really did smash into us later on we knew the bananaquits would need sustenance as well. Dish Network was still coming in clearly and we made ourselves comfortable in the king bed with our drinks and snacks. Ah, this is the life! The telephone was still working as well and I called my Dad to see if he could interpret the data on the NHC website for me. The 8PM update still showed St. John in the “Cone of Doom” although there was some hint that the storm had taken a slight jog to the east. The hurricane force winds in Omar were confined to a rather small radius from the center so every mile that the center passed to the east of us would be crucial.
The cold, leftover steak was delicious and so were the mashed potatoes. It wasn’t long before we cut into the Key Lime Pie as well and we both remarked that this wasn’t bad for a “last supper”. On TV, the World Series was on and it provided a pleasant diversion from the Weather Channel which had stationed a reporter in Puerto Rico who droned on and on about what a nice evening it was in San Juan. Of course it was a nice evening you idiot! Puerto Rico wasn’t in the “Cone of Doom”! Why wasn’t he here? Was he afraid of the traffic in Cruz Bay? Did he think he couldn’t find a parking space? Grrrrrrrrrr…
Anyway, a couple more phone calls to my Dad and it became apparent that the 11PM forecast update would be crucial to our fate. Omar was projected to make its closest approach to us around 4 in the morning as a Category 3 hurricane. It was now around 10:30 and we had no idea what was going on outside. This room was a fortress! We were sure that we had done everything we could to protect Reef Madness. Everything was behind walls just as strong as the walls we were behind. Everything would be fine… And just then – the lights went out.
“Wait… did you bring the bananaquit feeder in?”
“No – didn’t you?”
“Not me.”
“Marcia, I don’t remember if I put the 2 deck chairs back inside the Great Room”.
“ I know I didn’t and I’m not going back out there. I can’t see my hand in front of my face!”
“Well I'm sure as hell not going out there… I don’t care how much they cost…”
“Oh god…what else did we forget!"
The phone was ringing. At least I thought the phone was ringing. I had stuffed some earplugs in before I fell asleep because I didn’t want to be awakened by the booming and zooming that would be going on outside our cave when Omar struck. I jumped out of bed and fumbled my way towards the phone in the pitch darkness of the room.
“Hello”… “What?”…
Guess I’d better take the earplugs out.
“Ruth!!!” “It what? It missed us???”
Ruth was almost bursting with giddiness as she told us the news. “You slept through it? Open your shutters, it’s beautiful outside!”
I thanked her profusely for awakening us with the news. The power was still out so I turned on my cellphone to get the time: 7AM. Usually when you get a call at that hour it’s bad news, but this call propelled both of us to the bathroom window where we removed the jalousie windows, pulled the 2 x 4 from the braces and flung open the shutters. WOW – It was gorgeous outside! Quickly, we extricated ourselves from the barricaded bedroom and walked out onto our deck. The morning sun was glistening over Coral Bay. The muddy waters from the day before were already gone, and if we hadn’t known any better, this would have been just another gorgeous day in paradise.
But it wasn’t just another day. We knew we had dodged the bullet, and we were never more grateful to see that gorgeous view over to Bordeaux Mountain. That little jog to the east that Omar took the afternoon before caused it to slide 42 miles to the east of St. John. And that little jog took on more significance when we found out later that Omar had achieved Category 4 status when he passed our latitude. But instead of smashing our dreams to bits, he threaded the needle between us, the BVIs and St. Martin off to the east. St. Croix took a glancing blow, but it could have been so much worse…
We walked over to the Great Room porch and there they were: our deck chairs that we forgot to bring in. They hadn’t moved an inch. We couldn’t stop laughing…
What’s that? Several bananaquits alighted on the railing in front of us and they were chirping their little heads off. We glanced over the pool area to the left and there was our bird feeder, still hanging where we’d left it. Only one thing – it was empty. Time to track down that sugar cache from our overstocked bedroom bomb shelter... Our kids are hungry!
And after feeding the birds and spending the morning putting everything back where it belonged, life in Coral Bay returned to normal. And that was the most beautiful normal we’d ever seen…
Oh, and that coffee in the thermos that was leftover from the afternoon before? It was still hot…
Do you have comments about Reef Madness or a name suggestion for the weird looking bird? We would like to hear from you.