Weather

We had a pleasant and beautiful Saturday in Negril.

Got to the Pickled Parrot by 10:30 or so. Spent more time than usual taking in her amenities. We snorkeled a bit. Drank a few buckets of Red Stripe. Talked to the locals. Even paid one of them to perform a one and a half off of the rope swing. Although my first attempt at the rope and bar was relatively successful, my second was not, and I actually hurt myself on the third. Well, nothing ten kilos and twenty years ago would not have cured.

From there, we drove to Cosmos, on the beach, for a stroll up to the trampoline at Margaritaville. A nice walk, indeed, once you run the gauntlet of higglers and dealers.

“Smoke?”

“Gram?”

“Girl?”

By the time we were through with it all, we were exhausted. I was sore and sunburned, and rued the drive home, burned back wincing at the abrasive seats as we rumbled over the eighty kilometer pothole which is the highway, fearing my arms would not function at that next critical shift. We got home after dark, and barely made it until 21:00 before the eyelids summoned me to bed.

Sunday morning was cloudy, a rarity for the island. The clouds soon turned to rain. All right, we sometimes do get morning showers, but these did not seem to be letting up any time soon. I was beginning to think this rainy day was a good thing. I was still sore and sunburned and I could use a day in the shade, as opposed to wasting the day at Doctor’s Cave Beach as we had planned.

I went back and forth for a while here. Soothing shade or stunning snorkeling? Soothing or stunning? Hmmm...

Ultimately, the choice was not mine. The rains continued for the entire day. There would be no beach. No lime squishies. No patties and Red Stripes for lunch.

Just as well. I was still sore.

Hank called in the evening. It had rained all day from Montego Bay to Negril, and one abutment for the temporary bridge at Maggotty had washed away. There would be no way to get to the camp until it was repaired. I told him that I would try to be on location in the morning, at least to gather data and work on a solution. That did not happen.

From what I have been told, there are three seasons in Jamaica - wet, dry, and tourist. July through October is wet. Quite coincidentally, this correlates with the hurricane season. Since we moved here in July, all we have known is the wet season. I thought I had it mostly figured out. Every second or third day it would rain. Usually in the afternoon. Usually for an hour. Then, Ra would make his reappearance (“and there was much rejoicing”). This is really a great way to maintain the lushness. A good soaking followed by some hot.

Most often, the rains would be scattered across the north coast. Some days, we would get rain at the camp and the wives would be dry as they lounged by the pool. Some days, rain would scatter elsewhere from Negril to Ochi. Rare was the event which would deposit precipitation across the entire north coast at the same time. Even more rare is the heavy event which covers the entire north coast for the entire day. That rare day was Sunday.

As could be expected here, there is no way to estimate the return frequency of the day’s event. Let us just stick with the “rare” thing. Eventually, I did make it to work, but not the next day, and only after government and contractor crews had reestablished passable roadways from home to camp.

The flooding and associated problems were widespread. In Reading, the road up to Anchovy had become the primary drainage course for runoff from the surrounding hills. The flows had conveyed hundreds of cubic meters of cobbles, rubble, and rock down to the A1, and deposited them half a meter thick in some places. The extent of this deposition was over the entire roadway for a distance of a few hundreds of meters. Some of the rocks were as large as three hundred millimeters in diameter, although most were in the fifty to one hundred millimeter range.

Outside of Unity Hall, at Spring Garden, flows over the roadway had washed out portions of the seaside lane in numerous locations.

The road to Unity Hall itself had turned to mud and washed down onto the highway, turning it totally impassible for a time. This was as far as I made it on Monday, where I sat for almost an hour before turning around and calling it quits. I leave plenty of work on the laptop for this very reason. I would have waited a little longer, just out of curiosity, but I spoke to a man who had walked down to the blockage and did not sound very encouraging with his report.

The Jamaicans lack both the experience and the discipline to deal with the intricacies of lane sharing. Too often, if there is just one lane, drivers will approach from both sides and stop in the middle. No sooner is this situation resolved than it occurs again. Of course, the public works people have no idea how to conduct a traffic control exercise. Rarely do you see red flags and green flags manipulated by the flagmen. More often, you will see a red oilcan and a leafy branch. Sometimes you will see a green leafy branch with red flowers. Jah only knows what this is supposed to represent. The cops are no help at all. They will sit in traffic with the rest of us, then drive through the trouble spot and continue going to lunch.

On the west side of Hopewell, a culvert headwall was washed away, due to the force of flows over the highway, impacting from the roadside. Again, mud and cobbles rendered the roadway impassible.

In Sandy Bay, another flow of rocks and mud washed down a concrete lined channel and lodged in the town’s largest culvert, plugging it, and forcing the rock filled flow onto the pavement, resurfacing the roadway with mud and aggregate and flooding every building and structure along the main road half a klick to each side of the culvert. Except for another huge event two weeks ago, this had not occurred since Gilbert thrashed the island in the late 1980's.

At Maggotty, one of the abutments went out to sea, and the bridge tried to follow. The first day I saw this temporary structure, I wrote a memo stating my opinion regarding its lack of capacity. It still failed, leading me to believe that memoranda leave something to be desired when asked to provide adequate flood conveyance.

Prior to its failure, the reduced capacity of the channel through the bridge forced floodwater to back up above the bridge, overtopping the levees, flooding houses, almost drowning cattle, and submerging the driveway to the skills training center (they had to hire a row boat to get the students and staff to the road).

Fortunately, the temporary bridge was sturdy, and soon welded to a couple of hastily driven temporary piles, so a new abutment could be quickly constructed beneath it. Fortunately, no one died, protecting my safety record. Fortunately, the effects were widespread, so people are not looking for our specific heads on a communal platter. Hopefully, the improvements we are making, once they are complete, will work to alleviate these affects.
Fortunately and hopefully.

Beside this, it all irie. Read More......

Accommodations

We have finally completed the sale of our Crocker Township property. It certainly took longer than either of us anticipated, and was more annoying than I could have imagined.

When we decided to move to the Greater Antilles, we had to somehow dispose of our house in the States. One option was to rent the place. We found a property manager and had a couple of rental prospects, but decided against this plan for a number of reasons. Primarily was the fact that our home and grounds were a maintenance intensive property, and there was no way we could depend on a renter to care for the place in the appropriate fashion. We wanted to return to a house in the same condition as when we left it and, after eight years of continuous effort, I think it looked nicer than it had since the 40's. Why would a tenant spend four hours a week on the yard? Why should a tenant spend four hours a week on the yard?

So we decided to sell. I hear that selling by owner can work, but we probably needed more time, and we definitely needed a better understanding of house marketing. After two weeks of intensive walk-throughs but with no offers, our departure clock loudly ticking, we contacted a realtor friend of ours, and put his sign in the yard.

The first offer came that day [conspiracy] from the developer largely responsible for our increasing number of neighbors. I have no doubt that he would have carved the parcel into pieces, so it is probably fortunate that we did not reach an agreement.

Next was a couple from Des Moines, who needed a larger place for themselves and their two girls. He worked nearby. They seemed nice enough. They made an acceptable offer. We expected to close the Monday before we left town, but we learned on Tuesday that the couple had purchased a new truck, on credit, the Saturday before, effectively eliminating their bank’s approval for the mortgage. All of a sudden, the nice couple turned out to be a couple of Morons, and I no longer wanted to sell them our house.

Fortunately, in the same call where we were informed that we had Morons for buyers, we learned that there was another couple interested.

Meanwhile, the movers are scheduled to arrive on Thursday and Friday, and we have yet to finalize what goods are traveling by air, by sea, or only to storage. As a result of our effort to prepare for them, the house is neigh unto shambled, with boxes everywhere packed to various levels, and piles and stacks of whatnot in every room. I thought we were sold, so I had delayed and neglected any type of yard work.

Throughout the time we were trying to lure a buyer, we had kept the house spotless, cleaned, pressed, shampooed, and well manicured. Now it was a wreck, more like usual, and I had a tour to give. The Fates do this sort of thing to test my resolve.
Couple number two arrived for their tour right on time. I decided that I liked them better than the Couple of Morons. Both Alpha Geeks, they wanted a place in the country located between their programming jobs in Ames and West Des Moines. As high earning renters, they had no house to sell and a boatload of cash to put down. I liked them more all the time. It seemed as if they liked the house, too.

The husband seemed amused as the wife told me of her plans to construct a “Woodhenge”. She seemed quite pleased when I showed her my monuments aligned to the rising solstice sun. I knew then that they would make an offer [perhaps it is time for the Pagan Real Estate Network].

The offer came the next morning, but there was one problem, disguised as a couple of Morons. Apparently, the nonrefundable earnest money in Iowa is refundable. We could not just take their US $1,000.00 and deal with the new folks, but had to first give the Morons notice that they had not satisfied their half of the contract, then give them opportunity to remedy the situation, then (ultimately) give them their deposit (if we were still in town, I would have fought this until I had spent US $1k in attorney fees). The closing got moved to after we were out of the country. In fact, when we left town, we did not know to whom we were selling.

Eventually, the resolve of the Morons to move to the country withered and, by the end of July, final papers were signed.

“Hey”, you might be exclaiming if your reading comprehension skills are in the eighty fifth percentile, “if they closed on the house in July, how come I’m not getting this diatribe until the middle of October?”

The reason for this, gentle readers, is that we only sold most of the land to the Geeks, but not all of it. The quarter hectare behind our eastern neighbor we sold to him. John is a great guy. He let me use his lawn mower. He has some funky power tools. He watched over the place when we were out of town. He has a friendly dog. He needed more space for a pole barn. Plus, selling him a portion of our lot should not adversely affect the character of either parcel, but would reduce the possibility that our old place would be further divided.

Sadly, the Power of Attorney we left with Bryan covered the sale of the entire parcel, but did not cover the sale of a portion of it. Once this minor point was discovered, we were sent the documents to sign in Jamaica, to be witnessed by a notary, a local attorney who, after payment of JA $500.00, gave us his signature, stamp, embossed seal on one of those gold foil stickies, and sent us on our merry way.

Now we are finally homeless.

Additionally, for the first two months here, we had no lease, and the Company sent no rent check, so we were squatters, too. That has since been resolved.

Now we are just homeless, but homeless in the Caribbean. Read More......