cinco de mayo

today is cinco de mayo (and you know what that means!)

nope, guess again.

you’re getting colder.

am i going to have to do this for you?

ok, ok,…

it’s party time up on the roof!

it’s tex-mex enchiladas, spanish rice, spicy beans, guacamole, margaritas and other stuffs too numerous to mention.

(mostly because i haven’t thought of anything else yet.)

but it’s a good start and, like all little girl and boy starts, will surely grow into something better.

(yeah, yeah, i know. but you’re the exception that proves the rule.)

the only stumbling block so far is music. my collection of tex-mex music died a long time ago and is, in fact, proving to be irreplaceable. (what do you know, all your taste is in your mouth.)

but rest assured, flaco jimenez, the texas troubadors, and all the rest are still in my heart and soul. we’ll just have to pretend.

it’s a good day.

viva mexico!

da roof

after a three year war against the evil forces of greed and ego the roof top bar and grill (at BICD) has risen from the ashes  and is preparing to fly again.  and, yes, it is on fire.

the grand opening saturday night highlighted a simple yet outstanding menu consisting of hamburgers, chicken burgers, and veggie burgers.  (along with a “special” dish du jour once in a while.)

by far the most popular culinary delight offered by ben and scott (not their real names) is, so far, the veggie burger with bacon.  (come on, you know you want one.)

it’s so good  it’ll make you want to squeal like a pig.

(also available with a side of chicharron and cream gravy for those of you who still have some space in your arteries)

this gala event was attended by everybody who is anybody (you know who you are) including k, e, b, r, moi, and several other initials who have asked to remain anonymous.

g, k, s, w, p, r, and b were conspicuously absent  and  were sorely missed.

all of the beer was sold out (happy time prices all night) with only six cases of port royal surviving through the festivities.  the rum stores were seriously depleted and the tequila was shot plumb full of holes.

we capped the evening off by shooting a duck.

a moment of silence, please, a legend is born.

“it was a dark and stormy night…

right up until the moment i heard a gasoline assisted “whump!” and saw a pile of leaves  go up in flames  3 meters high just outside my window.

the next three seconds  witnessed  my apartment filling up with smoke to the point where i actually  had to get out of bed, get dressed, turn off the tv (where one of hugh hefners’ girlfriends was explaining her addiction to balls), grab what was left of my crown royal, and vacate the building.

(drop and roll, drop and roll…)

at this point there were five more “whumps” in rapid succession, more flames, more smoke, and a spontaneously dis-assembled crown royal bottle in pieces around me at the bottom of the stairs next to what was left of my ass.

i crawled across the yard in darkness permeated with smoke and ash through barbed wire fences, chicken droppings, and some as yet unidentified sludge that looked and smelled suspiciously like horse shit and baby oil.

(don’t ask me how i know)

i looked back and saw my landlord leaning on a hoe (shame on you!) shouting “gonna be some rain tonight, gotta be ready!”), stood up, shook back my clothes, and walked into town for a couple of late night beers.

and you’re probably sitting there thinking i made this up.

not really

the persistent hacking cough wasn’t enough.

having to buy another cell phone because my other one died wasn’t enough.

facebook e-mailing me just to let me know i had been voted “not really” in their best friends contest wasn’t enough.  (i was mortified! mortified i tell ya!)

the day started off relatively normal.  nice breeze, sunny, calm seas.  johnnys’ even had honey buns for breakfast.

but as the day wore on i kept getting the feeling that disaster was lurking just around the corner.

waiting.

watching.

snickering.

the cough started to get better.  the cell phone came with 900 bonus minutes for local calls and, after four or five honey buns, i no longer cared about the “not really” thing.

i figured whoever it was could just bite me.

so it was with a feeling of optimism that i finally found myself at tranquila bar having a nice relaxing sunset beer.

i forgot about mr. disaster.

waiting.

watching.

snickering a little more uncontrollably.

i started the night out having a few drinks with a nice massage therapist and ended up drinking with a navy seal and an army ranger.

wait a minute.  what!?

my head hurts.

going home

well, it’s official…

…i’m going back to texas.

where briskets grow on trees, ice cold beer freely flows in every stream, and 4 alarm chili bubbles up in hot springs.

back to luckenbach with willie, waylon, and the boys.

home to the armadillo.

the friendliest people and the prettiest women you ever seen.

home.

pirate party

the pirate party was a huge success.

lots of costumes (some very well thought out), lots of rum, and lots of “arrgh there any beers left?”

i don’t know if prizes were given this year for most ugly pirate because, having won it for the past five years, i found myself ineligible and had to leave this years crown for a younger scalawag.  (ok, a much younger scalawag!)

the most interesting part of the party was the attendance of the east end boys (they don’t usually deign to mingle with the scum that dares to dive with other shops) and their insistence that they had organized the festivities.

this struck me as particularly pathetic since the only real thing most of them have ever accomplished is stepping onto an airplane with a shiny new plane ticket paid for with mommys’ credit card.

oh well, it fuels the rumour mill.

now we move on to bigger and better things.

sunday funday was a bucket o’ fun yesterday, wednesday we start our weekly (bi-weekly?) sunset booze cruise, and we have another surprise for the wall of shame coming up shortly.

“after all the lies the truth is all that’s left.”

your repair techs’ brain on drugs

i know this is not a very clear picture but it’s good enough to illustrate the point i want to make. it was taken with a common web cam. not the quality that chastity (not her real name) uses to work her way through college with and the lighting could certainly be better but there it is.

the o-ring on the right is 1.9cm outside diameter just to give you an idea of scale.

it was used to “repair” a DIN connector (used in scuba diving).

the o-ring on the left is the correct one to use in this case.

to be fair, it worked for four months, which is more than enough time for the average tourist to move on to somewhere else before it failed (at depth) and killed them due to letting all of the air spew out of their cylinder (at depth).

someone elses’ problem.

luckily the person this happened to was/is a well trained and well experienced divemaster who knew how to properly respond to this eventuality and made it safely back to the surface with no further problems.

scuba gear is life support equipment for a hostile environment.

take your gear to a certified repair tech.

or go to school and learn to fix it yourself.

disgruntled

apparently i have a “disgruntled” reader who is threatening to hold my blog stats hostage if i don’t write another post.  you know who you are.

normally it’s against my principles (yes, i do have some) to just cave in to silly demands like this but, frankly, i’m not sure the bandwidth here can handle the extra traffic.

besides, i wanted to talk about tomorrow’s upcoming Bay Islands College of Diving / Tranquila Bars’ “Pirate Night” anyway.

apparently semana santa wasn’t a big enough party so the staff at BICD talked the owners of Tranquila Bar into yet another fabulous shindig.  there will be plenty of drink specials (built around the best rum in the world, no doubt; gotta love that flor de cana), homegrown eyepatches, pirate costumes, cardboard sabres, and an honest-to-god plank for those curmudgeonly scalawags who don’t much like drinkin’ and dancin’ to walk off the deck and into the sea.

i will be safely ensconced at the entrance end of the bar for quick getaways and such should the need arise.

so i’ll be scouting the place out tonight as it were just to make sure that everything is gonna be arrrghright.

see ya there ya lily-livered, scurvy dog.

“give us yer booty or prepare to be boarded!”

fighting the good fight

this is the latest response to the wall of shame the east end dive schools on the island have resorted to in their quest to keep tourists from realizing that they actually do have a choice as to where they learn to dive.

i guess it can be more than just a little scary to actually compete on a level playing field against other schools that you know are better than you are.

so why not just grab the bags, throw them in a truck, and drag the unsuspecting sheep along behind you secure in the knowledge that they will never know that they paid for sub-par training?

it’s a model that works so why mess with it?

we think it’s cowardly and it sucks, that’s why.

as you can see from the picture we believe in truth in advertising.

with faces like these you’ve got to be good.

so when you get off the ferry and through the gauntlet, turn left, there’s a lot of good diving down there.

toga party

we have two and a half days left in this idc.  overall it’s been a good one.

a screaming snit, a modicum of moaning, traces of tears, and a bit of blood.

and that’s just the idc staff instructor.

so we find ourselves with two and a half days free to brush up on waterwork, theory, and presentation skills.  we have a little room to relax.

the timing is more than a little serendipitous in that tonight (our off night as it were) just happens to coincide with tranquila bars’ annual toga night.

this is the night that officially kicks off ’semana santa’ (holy week).  or, put another way, the spring break of central america.

it’s also the night when all of the tourists don their togas (read: only clean sheet) and try to entice other tourists to share the aforementioned togas with them.

(come to think of it, it’s probably the only night of the year when all of the tourists have clean sheets.)

anyway, there will be a couple of frosty cold beers watching the  sunset from the dock at tranquila bar (frosty cold beers like sunsets, too), followed by an unbelievably good meal at Dave’s right next door, (set to the dulcet tones of Dave’s Grateful Dead collection), transitioning back to the tranquila bar to watch a night of frolic the likes of which Ph.D. candidates in Sociology all over the world would give their eye teeth to witness.

and horseshoes and the best brisket this side of Texas at the Driftwood Cafe tomorrow.

i am well and truly blessed.