Puerto Rico 2-09

That's me in the corner:)


So my trip to Puerto Rico.

I kept a journal more completely than I ever have in my life, but it was still self-edited, and I will edit it further before I put it on here for all you folks to read (ha! I'm imagining that someone will actually read this!). Wouldn't want to embarrass or incriminate myself. I couldn't find my camera before I left, so I bought a disposable one in Fajardo. So I'm doing this super old school, and it's taking way longer than it should. I had to actually go down and get my pictures developed, and then come home and scan them into my computer and crop them and stuff. Am I complaining? Yeah...

Anyway, it was a beautiful, empowering, life perspective-giving trip. This is my story, and, as they say, I'm sticking with it.

much love,
Ramona

Puerto Rico - Day One

Things are going all good so far. We just lifted off the frozen miserable Bismarck ground, so I suppose I have accomplished my one and only goal of this trip. Look at me accomplishing goals.

It's 4:30 in the morning and negative 4 degrees on the ground. I wonder what the temperature is like up here at 20,000 feet? And what kind of wind chill factor might be involved when you are moving 400 miles an hour?

Luckily I am seated in a part of the plane that is filled with all the good morning smells and none of the bad ones. It smells like clean bodies in clean clothes, hair product, lotion, and minty chewing gum. I am sitting next to a cute little business man who is reading Walden. I remember liking that book, but it is very UNcool to NOT like Walden (like who doesn't like Walden?) so it might have just been me conforming.

I'd meant to leave my hat with Spencer when he dropped me off, and then, well, now I'm drinking coffee on an empty stomach at 4:30am. So it's going to be a good day. I feel hungry, but it's probably just the coffee talking. I've been informed by my next door airplane neighbor named Tim who is traveling to Washington DC for work that Newark NJ is not a good place to find breakfast. Bummer for me, because Newark is my next stop, and this new, slightly larger plane doesn't look like it has any food on it. Tim asked me a lot of wonderful questions about my trip. The best was:

*******
How will you know that you have found the thing you are looking for in Puerto Rico?
*******

To which I replied, "hmmmm..."

And I've been thinking about it ever since - how WILL I know that I've found the thing I'm looking for? Is it even possible to find a thing if you aren't looking for one? Ha - Ama would kill me if I got this one wrong: finding something you're not looking for? Come on, let's say it together:

If you ever throw your garbage in the ocean, lake, or sea,
You'd better start rowing, for there will be...SERENDIPITY!!

Right. But now that I'm looking for serendipity it will, by definition, be impossible to find. You have to NOT be looking for it. Damn.

If I had a choice between reading a newspaper and doing anything else, I would choose anything else. There are a lot of professional people on these flights. The people in front of me are co-workers as well as travel buddies. In fact, they may not even be travel buddies. Just co-workers.

Our take-off is being delayed because they can't open the hatch to re-fill the on-board potable water supply. That seems like a pretty flimsy excuse to me.

When I get to Newark, I'm going to buy a banana. Then I am going to eat at least half of it. I believe this will make me feel much better. If blood sugar problems are contagious, then I think I caught it from Tracy. You spend too much time with Tracy and your body starts to think it needs food at regular intervals.

Well, look how time flies and here I am sitting on the tarmac getting de-iced again. I ate a salad that had chicken and other gross things in it. Now I'm sitting next to a man named Gilbert who is a 56-year-old-christian minister. He's been giving me some marriage counseling with a little smattering of bible referencing (which I always enjoy), and talking about his wife and kids and what a great husband he is. Whatever.

He told me about a puerto rican dish I should try called Al Capuria, which is a ball of mashed up vegetables and plantains and meat that is fried so it's crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. I hope I never have to try it.

I just finished watching an on-demand in-flight movie. I demanded Leonardo DiCaprio.

Puerto Rico - Day Two

What a difference less than a day makes. If you could have any idea of the inner...wait, let me start over. Last night my flight got in late and my backpack didn't come at all, so there I was with nothing but an ipod, a winter hat, and a full-blown migraine.

So I settled for a cheeseburger and fries at a Buffalo Wings sports bar and a $150 room at the airport Best Western. I was so sad. Then I wrestled with my head and everything that comes along with it. I can't go into the ugly details. Basically, I had a nervous breakdown and was sick in bed for a good 15 hours. It had been a long time since I'd experienced a full-on headache without any medicine, which I had cleverly packed in my backpack, which was in freaking Newark. Hooray for pharmaceuticals, but they don't work as well from a distance.

So in the morning my backpack arrived, and although I still felt dead, I decided to give this trip one more try. After all, I technically hadn't even been out of the airport yet. So within about an hour, I had checked out of the hotel, found a tourism office, gotten a shuttle to a car rental place, and was driving a silver Suzuki down the highway. Of course, I didn't know what road I was on, where I was going, or what direction I was heading. Details, baby.

I stopped in Luquillo at the public beach there, and then went looking for a hotel. And then I found the most beautiful, magical place EVER. El Yunque Mar Hotel - it is my fantasy bed and breakfast that I've always had daydreams about. It's a great big house, with like maybe 15 or 20 rooms, a pool, a bar downstairs, and it has amazing verandah balcony things all across the back of it, which is ON THE BEACH. Look at this freaking place....so lovely.

I just sat here and looked at this view all day and all night. I want to buy it and live here forever.

I have discovered that things here cost about exactly the same as they would in the US, so this is not going to be any dirt cheap developing-world kind of deal. But I've embraced it, redefined my relationship with my credit card, and decided to travel like a rich person.

I've never done it before, but lucky for me, I've got lots of gray-haired retired baby boomers around to watch and emulate. Pick up my suitcase? Oh, pish posh. Isn't that what the teenagers with the badges are for? These folks don't even say, "Hey, man, can you carry that to the hotel shuttle for me?" They just tap and point. Tap and point.

I ponder this and other nonsense sitting here on this beautiful patio in my pink swimming suit, looking at the waves and a palm tree sticking out of the sand right in front of me. If I stood on the railing and jumped out like 10 feet, I could grab those coconuts and then I would fall down and they would land on top of me. This is the best place ever.

There are lots of cool things to do and see here that I probably won't do or see. I can come back when I'm in a more do and see kind of mood.

Puerto Rico - Day Three

The only thing on my agenda for today was to buy a camera and also buy some good driving music. My car has a cd player and all of my music is locked away inside of my ipod. I've been considering this morning what type of music would be the best Driving Around in Puerto Rico music. Salsa? Rock and roll? Something I already know? Or something brand new? Brand new music has the advantage of allowing me to totally imprint it with this trip. But what if I didn't like it? What if I picked the wrong new music?

I would like living in Bismarck better if there were tiny lizards running around everywhere. Last night I watched the ocean in the dark. I watched cop cars over by those bars where I almost went for dinner before I realized the door to the beach had been padlocked shut and I'd have to walk on the streets. I went up on the roof and listened to a goofy little musical group playing in a tiny white church across the street. It sounded like a guitar, an accordion, a tambourine, and a woman singing. I didn't dislike it as much as I'd wanted to.
I decided on the best of Donna Summer and Juanes - La Vida es un ratico en VIVO baby. Both sort of new to me but not brand new. Right now I am sitting in the car in either Yabucoa or Maunabo. For the sake of this story it doesn't really matter.

I've been driving mostly on the 3 so far, which has been a pretty civilized, standard 4-lane highway. Then I got lost and got found and the next thing I knew my friendly orderly 3 turned into a crazy tropical mountain-climbing nightmare.

It turned into a one-lane road (for traffic going both directions to share, of course, cause that's what you do in the mountains, right?), steep windy switchbacks, chickens, dogs, cars parked and crazy houses stuck to the side of these steep cliffs, and then there were maybe 5 or 6 places where the ROAD was FALLING off the mountain. And there were men standing at the curves to wave you along if there were no cars coming from the other direction. There wasn't even room to get through! You had to drive up on the hill to get around - it was insane~


By the time I go to the other side, I felt like I was gonna barf and I had to pull over. And me listening to Donna Summer remixes the whole way - I can't believe I didn't die. I've done some crazy driving in my life, but that mountain was fucking crazy. Luckily, I had bought a pack of strawberry Bubblicious earlier, because that was definitely a gum-chewing drive. I chewed the shit out of that gum.

So then I was driving along muttering to myself when I suddenly saw a beach! And then I saw a pterodactyl! It was enormous and flying in circles over the water, fishing I suppose. I was surprised.I decided to look for a place to stay and ended up here, at a marina in Salinas. This is the place where I ate breakfast and saw a manatee. Look at those amazing mangroves. It's not the beachy cabana thing I was imagining - it's like a thousand times cooler. There are boats: sailboats, giant yachts, I think maybe a couple of small pirate ships, anchored all over the harbor, and they have little flags on them and some of them have wind turbines on top of their masts. That's a really good idea.

There is a beach just down the road called Politos, but I'm not interested in that now. I am so interested in these boat people. I bet some of them live on their boats, or at least take extra long vacations on them. These are the people that sail around the caribbean. What a mysterious bunch. They are representated more that their fair share in movies. I bet at least a couple of them are spies. I'm going to go into their fancy restaurant and get a better look at them, at least the hungry ones.

Boat people. Another lifestyle fantasy of mine. I can't believe I've never been a boat person. Tying knots and drinking bubbly. Should I try the cream of plantain soup? I don't want to, but it seems like the thing to do.
I couldn't do it. I couldn't order the plantain soup. Instead I got clam chowder and a baked potato. This is so rad. The marina restaurant had giant rope-encircled round windows. It's turning out that there is a party over at the snack shack. I can hear if from where I sit in my room. Will I be brave enough to join it, or will I go to bed early again tonight? What a cliffhanger.

I did end up going over and having a drink while the bartender watched an Antonio Banderas movie. It was kind of uncomfortable and I didn't know what to do with myself, so I smoked a cigarette.

Puerto Rico - Day Four

I slept so good last night - must have been those two rum and cokes. I sat and talked for a while with a sick man whose father had just died. He was in Puerto Rico to bury his dad and sell his house and boat. I didn't even ask this guy what his name was. He'd traveled all over the world growing up. I asked him why he didn't keep his dad's boat, and he told me he thought he'd lost interest in boating from spending so much time having to help his dad work on his.

I ate two bananas for breakfast. It's the only thing I can handle in the morning these days. I think I've eaten more bananas already on this trip than I have in the last year. Which is funny, cause I've only eaten like five. Here's the Hotel Fantasia something or other in Boqueron.


Right now, I am in Boqueron at the public beach. If any place in Puerto Rico called me, it was this area. It's really cold and windy and rainy here. I haven't found a place to stay here yet and it's early in the day, so I don't necessarily need to stay. I should have gone to Politos before I left Salinas, but I was on a manatee high and wasn't thinking clearly.

Ain't life weird? A bunch of loud American dudes just mixed me a drink on the beach and then tried to get my phone number. There are seriously like 5 of them. From New York. My first reaction (as always) was: whatever.

Then circumstances brought these folks back into my world (my hotel was across the street from theirs and I heard them in the pool area), and I ended up eating dinner with them. I absolutely wouldn't have if they hadn't had a woman with them. The woman's name was Irene, and I dug her spunky new yorkiness. They were eaters, let me tell you. Food people. It was quite a spread. And they were loud. I am pretty uncomfortable with public loudness normally, but as I got used to it, it was kind of fun. It ended up being a weird/good night. After dinner we walked around town and had a couple drinks together and told stories and jokes. It was nice to talk to people, and they were all really warm and kind and generous to each other and to me.

Puerto Rico - Day Five

What the hell is going on with my body? I got another killer headache last night, and then I took Excedrin even though I didn't want to because I knew I wouldn't sleep at all and then surprise surprise I didn't sleep at all. Whatever. Now I feel like dog shit. This is a good picture of me. My hair looks cute.

It is just weird how bad I've been feeling - I can't eat. I don't know what's up. I'm thinking about that guy I talked to whose father died. I wish I would have asked him what his favorite memory of his dad was. It rained and poured all night. I know because I was up all night.

This morning at 8:00am a man got out his power washer and revved up the loudest air compressor in the universe, and then spent a half hour power washing the sidewalk RIGHT OUTSIDE my window. And me miserable with a headache. I curled up in a ball on the kitchen floor. The dude was probably laughing. He probably watched me take Excedrin in the middle of the night and decided to mess with me.

I can imagine the man standing in his garage in the wee hours of the morning trying to decide which of his tools was the loudest. And then he decided to power wash the freaking sidewalk because it wasn't quite clean enough after 8 hours of hard rain. It's going to be a good day. I am so excited to do nothing.

Yep, it's been a whole lot of nothing today. The beach is so beautiful. I touched a starfish.

And as the day wore on, it became a bit of an eating adventure. Not an eating adventure by a normal person's standards, maybe, but for me it was pretty far out. Banana girl. I ate an oyster and a clam. Not good. I ate conch, and that was wonderful. I would eat it every day. I believe it was the first time I'd ever eaten any of those three things. Man, that clam was rough. It was like dry heave gag halfway down back up back down gag gag push it down thing. Nasty.

Puerto Rico - Day Six

I'd read about the coquis and even listened to them on the internet, but they are so much better in person (or in frog?) - I believe there are a few different species, and when they croak they say, "Cookie!" So in the evenings when I'm walking around and the frogs are all singing, I think about Cookie. I'll have to remember to tell him when I get home.

A comical thing just happened. Well, let me back up a little. I'm driving again today, up and down and around. I had been looking for this beach that I had randomly picked out on the map, but after I'd driven back and forth and hadn't found it (but I did find a tiny sandy island with a little house on it!) I decided that I didn't care after all and changed my goal to seeing the lighthouse. And I did see the lighthouse. And the beach there was so incredible. The water was just breathtaking. I feel like I keep using the same adjectives over and over, but it is just almost shocking, almost dizzying when you come upon something so beautiful. Okay.

So I put my stuff kind of under this tree. There weren't any palms there, it was brushy with a few little trees so I lucked out to get this spot under this tree, I thought. And this tree had a perfect place on it to sit and eat my apple, which was great. I though. So I sat on the branch for a couple of minutes eating my apple and then I got up to grab my sunglasses and I glanced back and the whole bottom trunk part of the tree was completely covered in tiny black ants and I was like, ohhhhhh shit. And I took off for the water but trying to act normal, you know to not draw attention to myself but I wanted to get in the water FAST and wash off my ass. And there were rocks and I was falling but trying to get in the water. I don't know if there were ants on me or how many. It was just creepy crawlie. And funny. And awkward.
The other day driving I saw some scary industrialized farming - great big fields and great big tractors. I saw a tractor absolutely dowsing a corn field with spray. And I saw Monsanto signs. Maybe we could just give the whole state of North Dakota to Monsanto, and all the people could leave, and Monsanto could just do whatever they want there. And in exchange, they can leave every place else alone.

Apparently one person can't go to the beach alone. It doesn't happen. And so one single person on a beach attracts friendly people. Like a magnet. So there were these two old men watching me at the beach, kind of keeping an eye on me. I could tell it was bothering them that I didn't have anyone to talk to. And then, sure enough, out they swam, to talk to me. They were really cute, maybe late-60's. The guy from Puerto Rico told me that his son was a drummer in Menudo. The guy from Peru was talking about a friend of his who takes nudist cruises and plays tennis in the nude, and that he might try it once just to see what it's like.

Puerto Rico - Day Seven

Just as I was leaving the lighthouse beach it started to rain and man, it poured all night. But you know, even pouring rain is just the most beautiful thing here. And by here I mean my happy vacation mindset. I've been looking at the map. I've got a lot of driving to get my car back on time today.

If I get going early enough this morning, I thought to myself last night, I will have time to make a couple of beach-related stops along the way. And yet, I'm not feeling too eager to leave. It's actually really hard. Blah driving...give me a break, man, I hardly slept last night. And now you say, yeah, we've heard that excuse a couple times already honey. And I say, whatever dude.

Today is Monday and I leave on Wednesday. Is it too soon to wind down and prepare to go home? Yes, it is too soon. Yesterday for lunch I ate rice and beans at a place called Rice and Beans. I wish everything was that easy.

And now I'm trying to get my car back. I have 2 hours to go about 100 miles. So you can do the math if you want. I found this thing that I expected to be a beach, but it was this rocky cliffy spot with huge waves crashing all over everything. And I sat there and thought, now how will I ever go home?

The drive to San Juan was the least fun I've had this whole trip. It was so hot, and I was so tired, and there seemed to be a slow, steaming hot traffic jam in every single town. Then I got to San Juan, and I think I had sort of psyched myself out beforehand, but it took over an hour of driving around lost before I found the car rental place. It started out kind of funny and got progressively less funny as time wore on. I suck at city driving. I did finally get the car back, in one piece, no less.
I met up with the New York people for dinner and decided to stay at their hotel. There was a jacuzzi. It rained while we sat there soaking - it was wonderful. And the bed in that room was delicious. It was the perfect combination of elements for perfect sleeping - great pillows. Great blanket. It was so good. I would stay in that bed like that forever if I could.

Puerto Rico - Day Eight

The taxi driver yesterday told me that there's a public beach just down the road from the hotel, so my plan is to walk down and take a look, take a swim, and then head into Old San Juan and be a tourist for the afternoon (what am I talking about, I'm ALWAYS a tourist).

Well, that was my plan at least. Wow, I was so busy all day, and barely got to Old San Juan at all. I spent the whole morning and afternoon sitting on the beach talking to Hannah my long lost kindred spirit through a sandstorm and a couple of rainstorms. By the early afternoon, we were the only two people left on the beach, except for the poor suckers stuck out in the water in kayaks in like 30 mile an hour winds. We talked like old friends who hadn't seen each other for a long time. And she was a message-giver who said all the things I needed to hear. I am very lucky to meet such amazing people.

Then the taxi driver who delivered me to town told me about the most amazing hotel.
Look at this view from the jacuzzi on the roof. I sat in it all night instead of walking around town. So much for nightlife. I got your nightlife right here. Anyway, why would I want to go downstairs and join all the poor bastards that WEREN'T sitting in a jacuzzi? The hotel was called Da' House, and was like a cool, crazy art gallery. The lobby, stairways, and every room was filled with original art by puerto rican artists.

Next morning I found myself a mean cup of coffee and bought a box of cigars from Pedro Pena, a "cigar artist" according to his business card, who was sitting on the sidewalk rolling them fresh. I couldn't remember if cigars were one of those things that is better when it's aged, so maybe fresh isn't a thing you'd want a cigar to be. I don't know. Maybe Pedro's specialty is selling shitty fresh cigars to people who don't know anything about it, like me. Maybe he chuckles every time he makes a sale.

I'm imagining myself working on a boat. Hey, if you've got to work.... Maybe I could buy a boat and live on it. Or a mountain. I don't want to go home. Dang.

Earth Day, Recycling, and Community Garden Articles

Here is a link to an article about an Earth Day event that we put together with Missouri Valley Resource Council in 2006. It was featured on KFYR-TV:

Earth Day Game Day

And here are two 2007 Bismarck Tribune article about the Bismarck Community Garden project that I helped out with - it started as an outcropping of MVRC work, and then turned into its own thing:

Hoe, Hoe, Hoe

Community Garden soon to be Reality

MVRC also worked on a recycling campaign to expand awareness about recycling and also to try to get the city of Bismarck to expand their recycling program, and I wrote this article for the Tribune in 2005 as part of that campaign:

Add Receptacles, Make Recycling Easier

Statement of Intention

 I suppose this will be the very last thing posted on this blog, which is the opposite of where it would go in any other context/medium, but I would like to state my intention for this project.

I make these blog posts to document that I was here, who I was and what I was doing with my life (well, more like my inner life, apart from my work, family, etc.). These are the bones I bury for someone far away in time or space that may wonder about me. With a little digging, they can be retrieved and collected like the pieces of a skeleton, and what they make when they come together might resemble who I am (or was) in some small way.

I only wish there were bones somewhere that I could find and use to recreate my ancestors who are gone. Maybe with a little more digging...