Monday - November 25, 2013

the wanderer returns

Yesterday I awoke to scudding skies that quickly gave way to another perfect 81° Bahamas day. The pure tropical air, rinsed and washed thoroughly on it’s long journey across the oceans from western Africa. The amazing white tropical light that makes colors burst with verve. A remote island, with not one single contrail in the sky nor a single ship at sea passing by, and hardly even a car on the one road that runs the length of the island. The nearly flat ocean in the morning, still as a pond. The openness and the silence of the world, that seems to cause your senses to enlarge, to take in as much as possible of this space as possible to anchor yourself to it. We got on our tiny little airplane - it seats 18, and the cabin is perhaps 4 feet tall by 44” wide. I measured; right shoulder against right wall, I could touch the left wall with my fingertips. Regardless, the flight out was great, the little turboprop growling along over the shallow sea and the cotton ball clouds as we serenely lofted our way up the length of the Eleuthera Sea to the main airport on Nassau for the big jet ride home.

Twelve hours later we landed in Newark. We flew through the storm clouds that are coming up the East Coast, so the flight was a bit bumpy but nothing heart stopping. They tried to go over the clouds, so we flew half the journey at more than 7.5 mile up. There’s no air in the air up there! From that height you can see the glow of the East Coast from a tremendous distance, probably 300 miles. We weren’t that far off the coast, so it was not at all hard to pick out cities and towns by their glow as well went by. It seems quieter up there too, the continuous thunder of the engines somehow muted. Anyway, eventually we got back down on the ground, and were welcomed back home by a balmy 28° evening with 40mph breezes, giving us a wind chill of about 10&deg.

I’ve got hundreds of pictures to download and all that post-vacation stuff to do. The house is nearly warm now, since we turned the heat way down before we left, so that’s fine. But there isn’t hardly a scrap of food here, so we’ve got to shop. And somehow I still seem to have “sea legs”; the entire world is slowly rocking left to right and back. Could be the after effects of all those Bonine pills I took. I’m not really a happy flier until I can catch a nap aloft. Until then I’m on the edge of queasy. After that I’m fine. Unfortunately I’m too big a guy to fit the typical airline seat with enough space to settle in for a snooze. But I’ll give United credit; I had several inches of knee/leg room to spare. The seat wasn’t wide, but with the arm rests up and small thin people next to me I managed. I remember a BWI flight to Grenada 12 years ago with my knees jammed into the seat in front of me for hours, while my bottom went numb from the rock hard, child sized seat, while the plane tried to bounce loose every rivet it was made with from all the rough air. I thought that nightmare would never end. Well, not on the ground in one happy piece.

So ... I haven’t watched a news report nor seen more than 60 seconds of TV in a week. No internet, no nothing. I hear a couple of volcanoes have gone off, Etna and another one down in Indonesia or someplace? And I’m sure Odingdong is up to his usual blatant stupidity and tricks. Right now, I really don’t care. I’m still driving on the left, zooming up and down Queen’s Highway, in search of more fresh fruit to mix into this cheap bottle of Ricardo’s Gold Rum. On an island where everything cost three times as much as it does in the USA, Ricardo’s sells for $9 per liter. Cheaper than dirt. Fresh ripe bananas right off the tree, add a mango, squeeze in a lime, smash it all up and throw in some pineapple juice, add enough Ricardo’s until it’s waaay too strong, then add handfuls of ice. Blend. Rum smoothie punch for everyone!

Posted by Drew458     on 11/25/2013 at 09:50 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
• Comments (5) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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