Neptune

I went on my first night dive a short while back. I accompanied the wife with Kris to use the facilities at Sandals, instead of my usual dive haunt at Jack Tar, one of the other resorts in town.

It was a nice set up, really. Their nine meter boat was new last season, and is equipped special as a dive boat. Two benches run down the sides of the deck, with little cups mounted to the back of the seats to hold your tank in place while you assemble your equipment and suit up. Actual steps, lowered into the sea, make it much easier than a ladder to exit the water. Once back on board, there are fresh water showers and a trip to seats on the flying bridge to take in the sights of Jamaica’s Second City as you motor back to the pier.

If only the captain could get the thing to plane. Instead, we plowed through the water, nose way high, stern way low, engines straining to move the water aside to allow us passage. He must not know any better. I imagine that someone pointed to the boat and said, “drive this and don’t hit anything”. In that, he seems to do a fine job.

Besides the Captain, we had two divemasters with us, plus a newlywed couple from Montana. The newlyweds were newly certified, and were diving two or three times a day (aside: freaks). Victor was scheduled to accompany us as well, but his wife chickened out and yanked him at the last minute.

The most exciting part of a night dive is entering the water, black as pitch, with neither sight nor indication as to what may lie beneath. You make a giant stride of faith, and trust that the water will be deep and the sharks asleep. I had been on this site a couple of times before, and being there after dark was like strolling through a familiar city in the wee hours before dawn, with few lights and no traffic, when only the insomniacs are moving about. In this case, the squirrelfish, all big-eyed and orange and less skittish than usual.

We use flashlights, of course, and with seven of them blazing, plus the small beacons tied to our rigs, visibility was not dissimilar to a daytime dive after a storm has churned up the bottom of the sea and polluted the view with all sorts of crud and particulates. The lights easily picked up the red eyes of shrimps, the translucent bodies of fry, and the glint of another diver’s flipper just before it tries to unseat your regulator. When we turned off the hand lights, it was not quite cave dark, but it was dark enough to see the previously unseen individual glows from untold numbers of tiny phosphorescent critters.

Since the wife is currently off island working on the Hart campaign, I did not hesitate to partake in another night dive this last week. For amusement’s sake, if naught else.

This time, we (Hank, Rita, and I) went through Jack Tar, using Divemaster Dwayne from the Holiday Inn. The dive boat at Jack Tar is about the same length as the Sandals boat, and they are both boats, but any further resemblance stops there.

Wilbert, the Rasta captain, told me once that it used to be part of the Royal Navy in the 1930's, as some patrol boat or something. It is open decked, with the only cover coming from a retrofitted canvas shade. There are no lights, running or otherwise, so we use our dive lights to ready our equipment. There is no head or running water, only the sea and a bucket of slightly briny tap water. The boat is sometimes loud, on this night crowded, and generally full of character.

With us were two Cockneyed Brits, who usually dive in dry suits in the northern lochs. Dwayne’s wife, a Canadian and marine biologist for the Montego Bay Marine Park, came with us, as did the Marine Park ranger and his girlfriend (du jour), a Peace Corps volunteer assigned to the Marine Park. The purpose of this dive was to witness coral spawning.

Watch enough Discovery Channel and I am sure that you will see this. The camera is really close to the coral; all is still, when --poof-- the coral spew their gametes. This rises as a milky cloud and flows to the appropriate receptors. There is little romance, just raw sexual activity, just like on the Playboy channel, only the spawning coral are more traditionally educational, … and somewhat smaller breasted.

Unfortunately, we must have come at a bad time, as we failed to see the coral spawn (perhaps they had a haddock).

Actually, I was not looking very hard. Sure, coral is interesting and all, but it usually just sits there, and there is always the hope when you are diving that there will be something bigger, more colorful, more tentacled, or more active just over the next rise. So I would scan the coral for a time, but then be drawn by whatever was just out of sight.

There is much out of sight, of course, because it is a night dive, and even with lights, visibility is still limited to five to ten meters, less to the side of the beam. So you tend to concentrate on what is immediately before you - bright red prawn, sponge, sexually inactive coral, sleeping jackknife fish, sponge, sexually inactive coral, tiny undulating red starfish (ruby brittle star), sponge, sexually inactive coral, purple mouth moray (a strikingly purple eel) - back up, hover, try to get as close a look as possible while staying clear of those very sharp teeth - sponge, sexually inactive coral,....

In one sandy area, while contemplating sea urchin trails, a small movement beneath the sand captured my attention. I moved in slowly and could only see two small plumes, four centimeters apart, blowing little puffs of sand into the sea. I waved my hand close to the disturbance to remove the cover. As the cloud moved up and away, I saw part of an unidentifiable (and ultimately unidentified) creature who immediately worked to rebury itself.

All I could see, despite numerous attempts, was part of a round head, and while I exposed a spherical head segment some fifteen centimeters across, the diameter of the sphere could have been twice that or more. This head had a visible mouth as straight as a string across the entire exposed portion, almost muppetlike, with two nostrils of sorts, the source of the plumes. Each time I exposed it, it reburied itself.

I could not tell if it was a crustacean or just a really ugly fish, and had no idea how much of it was still buried. For all I know, it could have been a monstrous sea creature, twenty meters in length, with huge gnashing teeth, able to sink our small boat with a casual flick of the tail, ravenous and hungry for divers.

I pestered it for five minutes. If it was a giant sea monster, at least it could show some restraint. Most everyone except the Brits saw the thing, and no-one, not even the ranger or biologist, could identify it.
The dive was shallow, just nine to twelve meters, so we got to spend over an hour at the bottom, surrounded by the familiar and the strange, intruding in the bedchambers of polyps.

It was fascination at five fathoms and, with apologies to Chris Cornell, a dive in the superunknown. Read More......

Tump Thump

A couple of months ago, Chris declared that he would pursue his Jamaican driver’s license. After half a year on the island, he thought it was something he should accomplish, since his Australian license was only good for the first thirty days that he was here. Upon hearing this, I too decided that having one could be wise, since legal use of my Iowa license expired more than a year ago. I could probably make it through my tenure here without ever having a local license but, what the hey,... we have little to do until the government sorts out who will complete the work.

Ten years ago, when I moved back to Iowa from Illinois, I went to the IDiOT examining station, whereby they scrutinized my existing license, gave me an eye exam, and filled out a form. After a flash of light and a brief wait, my new identification was spat out the far end.

Not so, Jamaica. The first of many steps is to look deep inside of yourself and ask, “how much free time do I really have?”

Next step, the tax office, which has the application form, on a double-wide sheet of legal paper, three-fourths of which must be filled with redundant data. With a little word processing, this could be reduced to both sides of a sheet of letter, or less if you get rid of the medical examiners certification, my next stop.

This was my second experience with Jamaican country medicine. The first was for the removal of some stitches from my back that I had received in Chicagoland. After almost blacking out during that procedure, the doctor remarked, “the mind and the body are sympathetic”. Only when I got home to a mirror did I realize what he meant, because it was the wound tearing open which convinced my mind that maybe, just maybe, it would rather be elsewhere for the balance of the procedure.

Apparently, the doctor could not tell that the incision had not fully healed prior to starting his work. But what do you expect for JA $500?

With this experience permanently and painfully in place, I drove to the offices of Doctor Stair. Before me were four others, crammed into uncomfortable metal folding chairs. After an hour or so (in which I peed in a reused plastic cup, had my blood pressure measured, and read the various posters regarding STD’s, sexual dysfunction and Viagra), I met the doctor, who checked my eye chart reading skills.

We talked about the highway more than my health and he eventually signed the form with multiple rubber stamp flourishes. The doctor suggested that I use my office address, as he thought it best to pursue a license using an address in the parish. With White Out and pen, he made the changes.

I had four passport photos left over from something or another, and these I presented to Mister Stair, brother of the Doctor, Custos of Lucea, employee of the Contractor, and friend of the Justice of the Peace, who must verify my identity and suitability for licensure. A week later, my form and photos were returned, duly notarized, verified and rubber stamped, despite my never having met the Justice.

Now we were getting somewhere, but not until we made another trip to the tax office, to pay the application fee. Of course, we (as Chris was with me at the time) could not pay the fee without a Taxpayer Registration Number. We could not get them that day, but we could apply for them, and be issued Temporary Taxpayer Registration Numbers that would last for the four months needed to process our request for a permanent number. The TTRN has a rubber stamp on it, to signify its officiality.
Next window please, where we paid the application fee, and received additional rubber stamps.

At the examiners, I presented my form and receipt to the Island Transportation Authority clerk, and was informed that the change in address made by Doctor Stair needed to be initialed by him,... and rubber stamped. Chris had a similar address snafu, so we retreated.

I secured the necessary initials and stamp, returned after lunch, and was given a slip of paper (rubber stamped), noting when I should return for my examination, some three weeks hence. In the mean time, I would bone up on Jamaican Rules of the Road pamphlet (remove the bulbs from your taillights, pass wildly, never dip your headlights, drive on the left).

Finally, the day of my examination was upon us. Chris was nervous we motored to the examiner’s station. He had yet to review the Rules of the Road, so he read the book as I drove.

A surprise awaited us, multiple exams. Since we were pursuing a “General” license, we were to be tested on our “Mechanical” knowledge as well as our “Rules” knowledge. Unfortunately, I had no clue as to how to answer the following highly technical mechanical question:

Q. If you are driving steadily along and your vehicle stops suddenly, what could be a possible cause?

Ok, the stop is sudden, so we can probably discount fuel, air, or electrical problems. If the engine quit, the vehicle would still roll along, unless the pistons seized, but then the transmission should allow for continued forward movement. Maybe applying the brakes would cause the vehicle to stop suddenly, but I would not be applying the brakes if I were driving steadily along. Hence, I must have hit a cow.

A. A disconnected coil wire.

Ah. Likewise, the Rules test had such posers as:

Q. What signal must you give when you are about to slow down or stop?

A. Extend your right arm with the palm of the hand turned downwards, and move it slowly up and down keeping the wrist loose, and….

Q. If you were at the intersection of a major road, how would you turn your vehicle around?

A. Reverse into the minor road and then drive forward into the major road.

We would see our test results after completing the Driving Test, actually driving around Lucea with the examiner in tow. Breathe deeply, relax, coordinate the use of turn indicators and the wagging arm signals, do not nail any peds, drive like you have had six too many and a state trooper is riding your bumper.

I think this is where I failed. Except for my last cholesterol screening, this is my first failed anything since that three semester Dynamics fiasco at State. I guess I was too cautious in avoiding all potholes and people. I waited at intersections until it was actually my turn. I stayed within my lane through the uphill hairpins. I checked my mirrors and waggled my arm prior to stopping. I did not sound my horn unnecessarily. I stayed within the speed limits at all times.
The examiner asked if I drive much on the island. Apparently, he wanted not a flawless example of courtesy on the roads, but more of the aggression typical of the local taximen

When we got back to the examiner’s station, I saw my Rules score, 25 of 26 (20 is passing), and my Mechanics score, 7.5 of 22 (16 is passing) (oops). Despite this, I think my cautious driving cost me, as Chris got an 11 on the Mechanics, and he got licensed. Anyway, I had two weeks to study before retesting.

So, yesterday morning I reported to the examiner, and was instructed to report to the tax office to pay another examination fee, and to get another stamp. That done, I retested my mechanical knowledge, scoring 21 of 22. I could pick up my new license the next day, today, at the tax office, provided I paid the licensing fee, which I did (three rubber stamps), and was informed that the machine that makes the licenses is broken.

I am to return in a couple of months. Until then, I will continue to drive with no valid license, as I suspect is the case with the majority of the road warriors already out there. Read More......