It's not always the grandiose things...

Some of what makes island life so special to us is just in the details of everyday life. For instance, dealing with power outages. Ever since our St. John obsession began, we've heard/read about the notorious track record that WAPA, the electricity provider in the USVIs, has with blackouts, rolling blackouts, brownouts, and every sort of service interruption imaginable. While I won't try and defend their pricing, their efficiency, or any of that, I will say that during all of our visits, and since we've moved here there haven't been a whole lot of times that we've been powerless. Maybe we've just been lucky, but so far (looking for some wood to knock on here) I don't think the outages have been much, if any more frequent and prolonged than those we had back in Florida.

Two notable exceptions - just before this past Super Bowl kicked off, the power went out on all of St. John and St. Thomas. While Shane and Jason walked down to the Westin, whose generators ensured that their guests wouldn't miss a single play, Leslie and I hung out with the dogs and just talked until power was restored. That was with 10 minutes or so left in the second quarter. It's a good thing we weren't emotionally vested in either of the participating teams because, as you may know, by that time the game, for all intents and purposes was over. No worries.

The next extended outage occurred a couple of Saturdays ago. Leslie was babysitting, and the rest of us were sitting out on the front porch when we heard/saw everything shut off. It wasn't dark yet, so we just hung out, had a cocktail or two, and waited it out. When it got dark the bugs chased us indoors. We turned on a battery powered camp lantern, got out a deck of cards, Shane got out his Itouch, and we went "old school". We were enjoying it so much that when the power came back on a couple of hours later, we merely switched the light source from the camp lantern to a lamp and went on playing...

Sunday morning - Easter Sunday! No egg hunt, no brunch, not much to mark the occasion for us - although Leslie did play "Easter Bunny" by getting some of the requisite treats for the mom whose kids she sat on Saturday night. So what did we do? Leslie, Jason, and myself were up early to watch a soccer game on TV (OK - Leslie would have been up anyway, but she did help cheer "our team" on to victory). After that Jason went back to bed and Leslie and I made a quick run over to Hart Bay to hunt for treasure (primarily sea glass). We came back, took Jason to work, and generally relaxed for most of the afternoon. Leslie had a babysitting gig in prestigious Peter Bay, where she would be watching some little ones whose parents were attending a wedding. Shane mentioned that he was considering going on Cruz Bay Watersports' sunset sail, and since I had nothing better to do I decided to join him. We took the ten minute walk up and down hills to the Westin and boarded Island Spirit for our adventure.

This catamaran is rated by the Coast Guard for 74 passengers. Shane told me that CBW limits the number of guests on the sunset cruise to 50. Maybe it was because people had other Easter plans, perhaps a lot of them were heading home after spending Easter week on island, but for whatever reasons, there were only 16 guests aboard our cruise - we felt as though we had the vessel to ourselves!

It was a glorious way to end Easter Sunday!

Monday, it was back to our ho-hum existence;
Breakfast with friends whose too short island visit was coming to an end,
A little shopping in town (for an event we'll be celebrating and relating later),
Happy hour at St. John Guest Suites,
Joining some other friends that were visiting the island for a wonderful dinner at Rhumblines.

Tuesday, after way too long of an absence, I made a return to the underwater world. I've spent a good deal of time on, in, and around the ocean, but had not been scuba diving for at least a couple of years. I took advantage of the family discount afforded to us at Cruz Bay Watersports and hopped on their two tank morning dive.  When the crew couldn't locate the wreck of The General in a timely manner we moved on and dove at Alan's Cut, off of Grass Cay, and then dove the back side of Steven's Cay.

Later I got a text from our friends Deb and Jay (who live on St. Thomas). They had been over in Tortola checking out a sailboat they are buying, and since they had to come to St. John to check in they decided to have happy hour over here. I met them at High Tide, and apparently the boat was in better condition than expected - you couldn't wipe the big grin off of Jay's face!

Thursday was supposed to be our "Dive the BVIs" trip, but it got canceled. So it was another two tank morning dive with CBW. This time my friend David was with me. He would be leaving island soon and wanted to get one last dive in before doing so, and this was it! Turns out it was a great day for it - we went to two very nice sites, Calf Rock and Ledges of Little St. James. Our divemaster, Ryan, killed a lionfish on each dive, so the tourists on board got a "show"!

While we dove, Leslie hung our with Carol and collected "treasure" while enjoying each others' company while they still could.

Moving to a place where you know some people, but don't really have any deep friendships is tough. meeting people in the same situation that you form an instant bond with makes things much nicer. And losing them is sad, but we weren't done with them just yet! Just as we try to appreciate every moment on this rock (the big one we all live on as well as the tiny one we moved to), we found ourselves milking the last bit of quality time with our friends. The boats, scuba, seaglass, and laughing over drinks are all just icing on the cake!

Catching up - in picture form!

Yesterday's entry was wordy (and maybe a little bit preachy?), so to counter that, and in our continuing effort to get up to date, today's entry will be almost exclusively pictures - enjoy!

Here's a photo essay of the last few months of our life on island...

Sunset from high atop Gifft Hill Rd.

Four lovelies at St. John Guest Suites

Nap time!

Peace Hill ruin

Non-indigenous species

Turtle in Chocolate Hole

Spotted eagle ray in Frank Bay

Lionfish - lovely but dangerous - and a threat to the coral reef ecosystem!

Jason exploring

Great Cruz Bay and beyond, as seen from Contant 

Volunteers at the Animal Care Center (ACC) 8 Tuff Miles water station

ACC water station

8 Tuff for all ages!

Cruz Bay sunset from Wharfside

East end predator

InnerVisions perform at Oasis in Coral Bay

Getting in the spirit!

St. Patrick's Day parade staging area

ACC crew preparing

ACC crew at the St. Patrick's Day parade

Cruz Bay

Schooling Tang

Grey Angelfish

 

Haulover North Bay

Smooth Trunkfish

Trumpet Fish

Shark at Haulover North

Angel's Rest - St. John's floating swim up bar!

Leslie and Steve on Angel's Rest

Upeer deck action on Angel's Rest

Sunset from the Cruz Bay overlook

 

Champ in his element. Patches needs a little more convincing...

Patches' little friend is obviously terrified of pit bulls...

Cruz Bay as seen from Asolare

Leslie hunting for treasure along the shore at Hart Bay

Hart Bay

Hart Bay

Some of the things that make St. John, well...St. John!

As residents of this lovely rock surrounded by azure waters, etc., etc., etc. we get asked one question an awful lot - "how wonderful is it to live here?"

The short answer is, "it doesn't suck" or some variant of that.

The question we don't often get asked is, "why did you decide to move here?"

Fair enough, the answer seems obvious what with the azure water, etc...
For us it was daring to act on a dream we'd been fostering for years, and a number of things paving the way for us to take a chance and actually give it a go!

The one that we used to ask, and the one that may just separate the visitors from the potential future residents is this one - "what's it like to live (as opposed to vacationing) here?"

There are a lot of components to that answer, at least if you ask that question of me (you've been forewarned!):

Other than the natural beauty, what do you like best?

For me, it's got to be the sense of community. Yes, it's a smaller place, population wise, than where we moved from, but you do get a sense of being in something together, especially when you're supporting one of the causes for which folks here rally.

What do you miss the most about where you lived before?

Not even close - my friends and family. You don't live in a community as long as we did without establishing some long and meaningful relationships. Fortunately, they still exist, and in today's world we can, and do stay in touch. But it's different than doing so in person.

Secondary to that, it's a matter of personal preference and highly dependent on what you like to do with your "spare" time and energy. Leslie and Shane might say that easy access to a multiplex where all of the first run movies is something they miss. Although I like the people that work in the ones here, I miss my old local supermarket. And not just the (relatively) lower prices. Selection, space, easy parking... Variety in restaurants is another one. If you're coming here for a week there's no way that you can hit all of them. If you're here for many, many weeks it's amazing how few you feel that there are - especially if some of them are priced "for special occasions only", you eliminate some for any number of personal reasons, and you consider that even the reasonably priced ones can take a big bite out of your budget if you're not careful.

Services - I suppose that I took curbside garbage removal and personal mail delivery for granted. And the fact that practically anyone could/would ship their merchandise to you. Some companies have pretty weird and seemingly arbitrary policies about what they will and won't send down here. You can't subscribe to some music and video streaming services (no ESPN3 for example).

What do you not like about living here?

This one if usually posed in the context of a visitor remarking "if I lived here, "X" would drive me crazy"
I typically don't answer this one as asked, but instead try and couch it in terms of the "what do you miss" questions. Every place that is populated with humans has some warts. There are always going to be people that are either having a bad day, or choose to always have a bad day, so you devise your strategies for dealing (or not dealing) with those folks.

If you could, what would you change about the island?

Here's where new residents need to, in my opinion, tread carefully. Quite often this goes back to the "they do this so much better/cleaner/more efficiently where I come from" attitude. And while some of that may be true, one should be careful what they ask for. Make a place too much like "home" and you may as well stay home.

Families that have lived here for generations, as well as long time residents, don't necessarily embrace all of the change they have seen here, even if some of it has improved/simplified some aspects of their lives. Of course some change will always be inevitable, as is the longing for the "good old days".  That being said, I believe that trying to have a positive impact on your environment is a worthwhile aspiration.

I think having a more robust/comprehensive recycling program on island would be great. Not only from a "green" perspective, but to help eliminate some of the litter that is all too ubiquitous here.

Personally I would like to see better treatment of animals. There are some great organizations on island (the Animal Care Center for one!) that are doing a lot to take in, care for, and place abused and abandoned animals, provide spay/neuter/feed programs for feral cats and much more, but there are a lot of animals left outside to either wander into harm's way, or are left chained up all of the time. Some of that is due to cultural differences (the governor has gone on record as standing up for the "right" of allowing cockfighting) but I'd like to see a program of education implemented that might change, even slowly, some of the pattern of animal neglect and abuse.

Are you happy that you moved here?

I would hope that the answer to this is always "yes". If not, then do yourself a favor and move somewhere else! Really, I tell people that this is indeed Paradise, but it's not Utopia. You still have to run errands, do chores, deal with people that don't make it easy all of the time, etc.

But... when you are driving to the store, or the dumpster, or on any of those other errands and you catch a glimpse of those down island views...ahhhh!!!!

When you wander into town to pick up the mail at the post office and seeing a kid that's obviously a visiting cruise ship passenger sitting at a roadside food stand enjoying a drink, and he's wearing a fully inflated snorkel vest even though he's hundreds of yards from the water, you try not to laugh and you silently debate whether or not you can discreetly get a picture of this on your phone for the "you're not gonna believe this" file...

When you're snorkeling, and the coral, creature, and fish just take your breath away and you don't have to think "I only have X more days of this before I have to leave"...

When that West Indies clerk that appeared to have a sullen attitude finally cracks a smile at your silly jokes, and warmly wishes you a good afternoon as you're leaving....

Yeah, we're happy to be on St. John!

...and growing!!!

Editor's note: Looking back, the most recent entry here was made over a month ago, and it contained news that was two months old at that time. Obviously not what we had in mind when we started this thing. So I've decided that rather than wait and publish novellas bi-monthly, to make this a short, and hopefully fun read, and post entries often. Most of the big drama of our move is past, so going forward we'll focus on the things that make living here interesting - enjoy!

We last left you in January after adding Patches to our island family. She has settled in well, as has Champ, who has accepted (and at times even seems to have embraced) the idea that she's here for the long haul.

Shortly after that, our island family grew once more. No - no more dogs, no cats, no chicken, iguanas, mongoose, or deer (at least not that live in the house). Jason was unable to secure an internship that he had hoped would occupy his time and talents during the spring and summer, so we all decided that he should come down here to bide his time until grad school/the next phase of his life. He arrived mid-January, spent a few weeks working on his base tan, his beach volleyball game, and making on island friends, then ended up getting a job at the restaurant Asolare.

So we have a full house now - people that sleep (when the barking dogs and crowing roosters will allow) in every bedroom, and two dogs that sleep wherever they please!

Leslie's babysitting service ( shameless plug - her web site is at kidsnightin.com ) is thriving. One of the side benefits of that is that she gets to see a number of vacation homes that we would likely never get to visit otherwise.

Shane is doing well at his job with Cruz Bay Watersports - he's actually involved with training the new hires!

Leslie and I volunteered to help out at the Animal Care Center's annual winter gala - this year's theme: Party Like a Rock Star. It was held at a beautiful home high above Chocolate Hole, and brought out the best that the island has to offer - in costumes (Elvis won the costume contest!) donations, volunteers, food - the works! And Leslie showed, once again, that SHE is a rock star!

 

We've done a bit of snorkeling (yay!). We even discovered that the bay closest to where we live, which is a five minute walk away, has much better snorkeling than we thought. It's nice to know that swimming with the sea creatures is so easy and convenient!

   

Leslie got a haircut! Maybe not earth shattering news to most people, but it was her first one in a year. And, just like the previous one, it was done in conjunction with her being a part of a team that was part of an event that is a part of a national organization that raised (once again!) a ton of money (not to mention awareness) to help fight pediatric cancer through research. We are all so proud of her!

We have been busy living our lives. We do a lot of the mundane stuff everyone does, and we're not on perpetual vacation. But we do try and stop from time to time to remember and reflect on where we are, and how fortunate we are to be surrounded by friends, family, people having fun, and...of yeah - the scenery ain't bad either!

Growing...

There's an old saying, "life is what happens when you were expecting something else". I think most everyone can see the truth in that. We sure can. For better or worse (and it's certainly not all of the latter) our dreams rarely play out exactly as we imagine them. Take moving to an island in the Caribbean for instance...

When we first visited, and fell in love with St. John, we could only dream of moving to and living on this lovely rock. And dream we did. We spoke of and shared our personal versions of this dream from time to time. I have to be honest - I rarely if ever included having Champ with us in those scenarios - probably because he had never been with us on any of our visits. Not that we could even remotely consider not bringing him along once the decision had been made to make the move. And, despite some of the logistical obstacles of getting him here, and the tweaking of our day to day routine to accommodate his presence here with us, we wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm pretty sure that none of my daydreams included having other people living with us either. But when it seemed to work out the best for all involved to include Shane in our "island family", the reality of our dream once more underwent some changes. And despite some of the day to day challenges of having one of our grown children living full time (at least for now) back under our roof, we enjoy our life here in Paradise.

I suppose by now I should have been made aware that change isn't the outlier, it is the constant - perhaps the only constant! And so, less than a full week into 2014 (Oh - yeah - Happy New Year everyone!) we found our "situation" taking another new turn.

This one was probably less of a surprise to a lot of folks than it was to me...

Remember Patches? She's the loveable pit bull mix from the ACC (St. John Animal Care Center) that Leslie fostered from time to time before any of the rest of us had made the move down here. We'd had her over for "sleepovers" on a few occasions and had gone to the ACC and taken her for walks a few times as well. And, as was noted in our last blog entry, she was what Leslie had hoped would be her Christmas present.

Maybe I'm paranoid, or have an over active imagination, but there certainly seemed to be a "campaign", waged on multiple fronts, to convince me that we should adopt Patches permanently. I couldn't log onto Facebook without seeing comments directed "to Leslie" along the lines of "keep her already", or "you two are meant to be together", etc. On more than one occasion when we were meeting up with friends that were visiting the island, the question was posed point blank, "so, when are you adopting Patches?"

I had a litany of reasons (NOT excuses, as I often told myself - and others) as to why this wasn't practical for us at the present time. Having two dogs would certainly limit our housing options going forward. How would Champ deal with not being the "only child" - after all, wasn't he still adjusting to the move? How would a dog that had been living in a kennel environment adjust to living full time in a house? Would she tear things up? Given enough time, I could build a compelling case against bringing her home to stay.

One our trip back to Florida for Jason's graduation, I had mentioned to our friend Michael, once the subject had inevitably came up, that as sweet as a dog as she is, and as sorry as I felt that she didn't have a "forever home",  I couldn't save all of the dogs in the world. I figured as an engineer, that he would surely see the list I'd compiled and agree that it made the most sense. Instead, he told me a story about a guy walking along a beach that was covered with starfish that had been washed ashore by the tide and were left high and dry. As he walked along, he picked up one starfish after another and threw them into the water. When a little boy questioned his actions by remarking that he couldn't possibly save all of them, the man held up a starfish and said "you're right, but I can save this one". Thanks a lot Michael...

So...over dinner on a Sunday night with another friend that was visiting, the question was tendered yet once again. I was ready. I calmly laid out my objections/reasons/excuses, emphasizing that it had nothing to do with Patches herself, whom I thought was a sweet and wonderful dog. Surprisingly, the response was, "that makes a lot of sense".

Exoneration. A third party, someone else that wanted to see Patches in a good place, had acknowledged that my reservations were legitimate. Back to finishing dinner and moving on to other subjects.

But, as I ate and drank, my thoughts drifted to Patches sitting in her kennel in the dark, and..."but I can save this one".

I can save this one.

I can save this one.

I can save this one.

During the dessert/no dessert deliberations I suddenly blurted out to Leslie, "if you want to, we can bring Patches home tonight".

"For good?"

"For good."

"You better not be teasing me".

"Nope, if you want to we can go and get her right now."

There's another old saying. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you deal with it. We already knew that our life here is and was going to be different than the fantasy world version. Sometimes going with your heart has to take precedence over going strictly with your head. We had been operating on that premise ever since we took the leap of faith to chase our dream, so why stop now?

So...without further ado...welcome to our newest family member, Patches "Starfish" McKibben!