Almost there...

My joining Leslie here on St. John was a huge step for us, but now we're on the verge of being almost "complete". Yesterday morning I put her on the 6:00AM ferry to St. Thomas so that she could fly back to Melbourne, and return tomorrow with our son Shane, and Champ, our Labrador.

She endured delayed flights, lost luggage, and getting a text from Shane that said "you're flying in to Orlando, right?"

What did I do with my "solo" time on the island? To start with, after I dropped her off I went back home and tried to sleep a little more, but to no avail. Too many things on my mind.

A little after 7:00, I got a text from our friend Randy asking me if I wanted to meet him somewhere for a snorkel around 9:00. That sounded great, I needed to get in the water, I wasn't scheduled to try my luck with Shipping Guy again until after noon, and I thought Randy was supposed to have a meeting with Solar Guy this morning (Randy owns a beautiful house in Coral Bay and is on island to see the finalization of the project to add a bank of solar panels to his home).

It seems in addition to joining me for a much needed "water break", off-islander Randy (get Mr." I've been here 11 days" calling someone else a non-local!) was imparting some of his wisdom to me. He let me know that he told Solar Guy their meeting would have to wait until later in the day. The lesson: do what you came here to do, this place is on island time anyway, so don't make yourself a slave to a schedule.

Pretty good stuff - but then, Randy is no newbie - he's been coming here for a long time, and the things he and his wife went through during the building of their house provided a graduate level of study in the ways of the place. Seriously, you should check out the blog they started when they were building their place (http://www.reefmadnessvilla.com/Madness-1.htm) - it's as informative and entertaining as any book on the subject of St. John/island life!

I met Randy by the parking lot at the east end of Maho Bay and we made our way into the water, where, for the next two hours we breathed in the beauty, both above and underwater, that St. John has on offer. There were a bunch of angelfish out today - queens, grays, frenches, and the water was clear, calm, and comfortable!

Shortly before 11:00 we got out - after all, Solar Guy wasn't going to wait forever, and who knows? Maybe Shipping Guy had news for me as well. I took the North Shore Road back, and stopped at Cinnamon Bay to get a fresh water rinse in the showers there. Once home I rinsed my gear, got a bite to eat and checked my email.

Nothing.

I called Shipping Guy, and he said that he had left me a message. OK, I have a new phone that I'm still figuring out, so I went down the "how do I retrieve voicemail?" path, finally jumped through all of the requisite hoops, but still...nothing.

Back to old school, gave him a call.

"Good news, your shipment is here" (after the "how do you spell your name again?" ritual). Have you cleared excise and customs?"

"I thought we were paying a guy to do that"

"You mean Excise/Customs Guy?"

"Yeah, that's him"

"Yeah, well he hasn't. If you want him to, he can, but he might not be able to get to it for another couple of days."

"OK - assuming I do it, what do I need to do?"

"You need your bill of lading and inventory list in triplicate, take it to the excise office, then to the customs office, then bring it back here. But those guys usually quit around 3:00. Do you have a copier?"

"No."

"That's OK, I do, just come by here first."

"I'll be right there."

"Umm...I'm getting ready to go to lunch."

"How long will that take?"

"I'm not sure. I'll go ahead and make the copies for you, and if I go to lunch before you get here I'll leave them on my door"

"I'm on my way!"

I put on a shirt, grabbed the keys, and was out the door. I get to Shipping Guy's office and I'm told that he's out to lunch. I tell the nice lady my name and ask if perhaps he left some papers for me on his door, and she goes to check. Lo and behold, they are! I thank her as I shoot out the door headed for the excise office, which, for some reason shares a building not with the customs office, but with the DMV.

The DMV has a parking lot, but even though there appears to be very little DMV business at the moment, the lot is full. So I drive to the public lot, just a stone's throw away, but of course, in the opposite direction of where I'll need to go next.

I'm about to ask a guy where I go for excise related matters when I notice the word "Excise" embroidered on his shirt. How convenient! I tell him that he's just the guy I'm looking for and he says that he'll be with me in a minute. Sadly, I got there too late for him to tell me that he was having his lunch (as evidenced by the empty food container that he was carrying) but he was able to take it somewhere and do something with it for a few minutes to satisfy his desire to make me wait.

Maybe that's being unfair. After a couple of quick questions he stamped my forms and sent me on my way. On my way to where? To the customs office, which I had been told was over by the post office. I know where the post office is - it's the building around the corner from the ferry dock where there are no dedicated parking spaces (for customers) and where, when there is a space nearby that's available, they're inexplicably closed. And the customs building is "over by" the post office, kind of. It's across the street beyond the construction fencing, in the same building as immigration (at least that makes sense).

The door to the "cargo clearance" area, as opposed to boat check in, was locked, and peering into the tinted windows it appeared as though the office was empty. Perhaps 3:00PM had come early? After waiting around for several minutes I decided to brave the wrath of the officers at the boat check in area to ask if Customs Guy had gone home for the day.

"What do you need?"

"I need to get some cargo cleared so that I can take possession of it"

"Your cargo?"

"Yes"

"What is it?"

"Household stuff, since I just moved here"

"New or used stuff?"

"Used"

"You selling it?"

"No, just planning on using it."

"You need to see Customs Guy - he's the one that knows how to deal with that"

"And he is?..."

"Having lunch. You should come back in twenty or thirty minutes, he might be back by then."

(I swear, do the public servants on this island all take turns having lunch, one at a time?

"Well, I do have to go to the post office to pick up something"

"Oh yeah, that should take you plenty of time"

(You think?)

 I guess the fact that I was parked a good ten minutes walk away was enough to pacify the postal gods because, amazingly enough, the post office was open in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. I sacrificed the appropriate amount of (island) time and was rewarded with my junk mail. But had it taken long enough?

 It turns out that Customs guy was back from lunch, he just wasn't done eating lunch. Fortunately, between mouthfuls he was able to instruct Boat Check-In Guy as to how to stamp the forms, and I was once again on my way.

I finally met Shipping Guy. He was as nice as he had sounded on the phone, but was either losing his touch, or decided that he had toyed with me enough because he told me to take the papers to Loading Guy, downstairs.

Loading Guy looked over my papers, said that in fact, our stuff was there - he had just unloaded it today. But it was behind a bunch of other people's stuff, and it was close to...lunch time? No silly - quitting time! It would be available first thing tomorrow. Which was OK with me. Some friends of ours were letting us borrow some furniture to put into our new digs and it was almost time for me to meet him at his house for the move.

But before I left town there was one more stop to make. We had gotten a call from the Animal Care Center that a package (our new AT&T micro cell - you'll have to read the previous blog entry for the back story on that) for Leslie had been delivered to them, and that we could pick it up at our convenience.

Why was our package delivered to the Animal Care Center you may ask. Because it was sent via FedEx, of course. It seems FedEx doesn't deliver to PO boxes, and no one on St. John delivers to, or for the most part is even aware of, physical addresses.Still doesn't add up? Stay with me. Someone at the local FedEx office looked up Leslie on Facebook, saw that she volunteers at the Animal Care Center, they know where that is - BOOM! Do you get the feeling that things work a little differently here?

Got to our friends house - we loaded the furniture in our vehicles and I told him to prepare himself. I said that the apartment we are moving to reminded me of the kind of place where poor college students live. He remarked that it didn't really matter, that he could live anywhere. Once we started unloading he asked, " so, how long of a lease did you sign for this place?"

I made it back home, tired, thirsty, sweaty, and hungry. A shower helped with the third, and a text from Randy asking if I wanted to meet for some beer and a bite held promise to take care of the second and fourth. A couple of beers at the Tap Room, a burger washed down with another at Driftwood Dave's, and I was ready to take care of tired - and I did - like a champ!

This morning I did stuff around the house preparing to move to the new place. Many miles northwest of here, Leslie and Shane were doing much of the same. I could understand the weariness evident in her text messages - they are up against a hard deadline - today is the last day before they (and Champ) leave our home of many years, probably for the last time ever. And, as anyone who has moved knows, those "last few things" to take care of have a way of multiplying beyond belief. I was experiencing the same only a scant twelve days ago.

I did manage to get our stuff extricated from the shipping company, delivered, unpacked, and put away (sort of). This will make a good story one day, but looking over the things that I shipped, and thinking about the stuff that didn't "make the cut", all I can say is I must have been really tired when I was packing it!

Leslie and Shane are taking a well deserved break right now, having dinner and drinks with some good friends at our favorite eating/drinking spot in Melbourne. I'd like to think that afterwards they could go home and go right to bed, snatching as much sleep as possible before what will certainly be a trying travel day. I'm afraid that instead, they will get right back to working until they either say "that's enough" or they collapse from exhaustion.

We will be a tired bunch come this time tomorrow, that's for sure. But we'll be a tired bunch together!!