Author: Bill

After I finished moving all the heavy stuff – Paul said he had a leaking skylight he would like me to look at. I jumped in DD and followed about half way across the island to a small (beautiful) place nestled in on a hillside. A view to die for~!! I crawled up to the skylight from the inside and then went out and got up on the roof to take a look.  Came down and told Paul I thought I could stop the leak (once a roofer, always a roofer I guess).  Paul had to go pick up some material for the job and by that point, it was late enough in the day – -I needed to get back to my Queen, once again having been stranded at the condo. I got back and we spent a relatively quiet evening.

I was up again the next morning and on the road by 08:30 to be back out on the house on the hill by 09:00. Paul was there and I set in immediately to work on the skylight. In short order I was done with that.  As I was wrapping up, Paul asked if I was interested in doing some power washing on the house and I said sure….. it had to be a damn site easier than moving those bags again….. Paul had to go get the power washer, so I ran back to the condo to see my Queen for a couple of minutes and put on my swim trunks. If you are power washing anything – and don’t get wet during the process – you’re not doing it right~! We met back up at the house on the hill and I set right into to power washing. Paul had running to do and left. For the next 4 hours – if it didn’t move – it got power washed. I was at a good stopping point (which is damn hard to do with a power washer) and by then my back was killing me – so I cleaned up the tools and went home to once again soothe a very sore body.

Next day was going be [I thought] a lot easier day. I had to meet my diving instructor out on the West end of the island – to begin the first of 2 days of  “field” training for my Rescue Diver Certification. Greg Gapen of Latitude 17 Scuba was my instructor and immediately started putting me through my paces. He didn’t cut me any slack and made me re-do anything I didn’t do to his satisfaction. A mutual friend (Bob Riggs) was there to be the victim during my training. For a pretty solid 3 hours – I ‘rescued’ Bob. I should point out, that Bob was also very efficient in his role. Making me handle his full ‘dead’ weight when appropriate and offered NO help what-so-ever…… other than helpful hints between exercises. 3 hours later, the first half of the water training was done…… and I could not hardly walk straight. Smack my a$$ and call Judy~!! I always thought the course would be tough, but no where near that…… little did I know what was in store for the following day.

I couldn’t get to comfortable though, because I had an ‘interview’ of sorts to get to on the other end of the island that afternoon…… I was auditioning with a local band, to possibly be their drummer~! Over my limit again, so more tomorrow………

Good night Ya’ll – Thankx for stopping in~!

Island version of a Catalpha worm….MUCH bigger though

The view from where I was power washing

Condo Christmas decorations…. woo-hoo~~~!

Trying to relay stories as they happened in the past several days – but the days are going faster than my memory is…. getting older really does suck~! Please note: I did NOT saying getting old…… because I’m not getting old….. just because you get older, does not mean you have to get old…… it’s just a lot tougher to not get old. I continue to push myself, to do things I know that I once did with ease and almost without effort. It’s a little bit depressing, at least for me, to do those things I once did effortlessly and now struggle to get through it… to have to stop and gasp for air and let aching muscles rest a bit before continuing. Did I take care of myself to be in better shape ? Nope — Am I changing things to be in better shape…. reluctantly….yes, a little bit, but I’m not very good at it – because I’m at the point where my logic is, I have had a good long vibrant life and earned every inch of where I am now – I should be able to truly enjoy my ‘golden’ years, to do and eat what I want…… but – I also want to hang out a little while longer – so I am making efforts to lose a little weight and eat a little better. Will I quit smoking or drinking ? Realistically…no – but I am a huge believer in quality of life…. not quantity of life….. so I’ll muddle on. Dammit Emmit….. I did it again…. 90° off topic……..

After I finally got fished out of the water from the Triathlon…. I stowed my gear in the truck and set off to find my Bride. I found her manning a gate entrance. I could see from the look on her face she had, had about all she cared for, as the same as me…. She handed off her position and we both limped back to the truck and headed back to our nice cool, quiet condo. We both showered, took some aspirin and spent the rest of the day on the couch, moving as little as possible – both, totally spent from our morning. (Reminder that the day started out at 03:45 for me and her shortly afterward)

The next morning — we both crawled out of bed, not much worse for wear – other than tired (sore, tired muscles made for a less than stellar nights sleep). We were both waking up when I got a ping from one of the guys on the island that has been keeping me busy with heavy lifting chores. It doesn’t pay much – but it gets me out and helps him out a bunch. He was asking if I could help for a couple of hours with some more heavy lifting. My Bride was okay with it – so I told him sure, I just needed a little extra time to wake up and get going. I met him at the job site at 09:00 and spent the next 2.5 hours moving more of the 96 lb. bags of Terrazzo mix. Green and blue…… I was about worn out [again] and quite colorful when I finished.

Dammit – at my limit again already… so stopping here for tonight.

Good Night Ya’ll —– Thankx for stopping in~!

Damn Jar heads…. can’t take ’em no where nice~!

Cynthia and my Queen…

Sunrise on the boardwalk~

Waiting for the boat…

When we last left the dynamic duo (me and my Queen) 😉 I had just been awaken by the god-awfulliest stomach pain I have had in recent memory… again – A truly nasty,nasty way to start a day~~ I bolted out of bed and ran to the bathroom….. I won’t go into any more detail – because, really….. who wants to hear about that ?? 😉   After about an hour I was ready to go…. well, as ready to go as I was gonna get. My Queen and I loaded up and headed down to the boardwalk in downtown Christiansted. My Queen offered up herself to help where needed for the Triathlon while I got my gear loaded aboard the boat that was to haul me and a dozen other Rescue Swimmers out to the course the swimmers would be swimming. Me and my two buddies (Greg and Hillary) were the first off the boat, being dropped at the last turn of the 1.12 mile swim. Hillary has an impressive camera set up and was wanting to get pictures of the swimmers as they passed over head. Yes, we were to be under the water for this leg of the race. As it turned out, the visibility where we were at was miserable and she didn’t get hardly any pictures – but it was a very unique experience, to be hovering in about 15′ of water watching almost a 100 swimmers go over the top of you. We were requested to stay in the water for the second leg of the race, which was a sprint (much shorter course) so we bobbed around in the water waiting for the second leg to commence. It finally started and we opted to stay on the surface for that race…… it was really kinda cool watching all these folks go by. One big revelation I had – was the face of every swimmer I saw, looked like they were in pain. I mean serious pain. I could not help but wonder why a person would want to do that to themselves. I’ve always heard about a “high” intense athletes get while doing their thing….. I don’t think any of those folks had quite got there yet. 3rd to last swimmer on the sprint was an older gentleman….. probably my age or slightly older….. got to the corner buoy where I was stationed. The guy on the paddle board who was trailing him motioned to me to “watch this one”….. I eased over to him and asked him if he was alright or needed help. He declined my help. He hung there for a little bit and took off again for the finish line…… he didn’t make it a 100 yards, before I saw another paddle boarder pull up to him and grab him…… Coast Guard boat pulled up to them and hauled him out of the water. He was the only swimmer that needed assistance. After what seemed like an eternity, ‘our’ boat finally pulled up to pick us up. We had been in the water just over 2.5 hours and because of a small current – we had to kick constantly to maintain our position. That is 2 and a half hours of constant swimming~! I was never so glad to get out of the water in my life. My hips were killing me, my feet were starting to cramp and I was a wrinkled as I ever care to be. A pretty unique experience. Will I do it again?? Hell yeah~!   😉

Good night Ya’ll —– Thankx for stopping in~!

(That be ‘Pork Chop‘ in the background~~!)

Bob Riggs

My Queen~~ <3

Hello friends, neighbors, sports fans and all the rest of you…… finally….. not too tired….. finally…. [reasonably] stable internet….. finally…. lots of pictures that I have now got uploaded and can publish….. I’ve missed chatting these past couple of days, but it has been some kind of week for the ole fat boy and his Queen…… I forgot to see where I left off – so gonna wing it. I know there had been entirely too much stuff happened to get it all into one post….. so I’m just gonna go in spurts and see if I can get you caught up a little bit…. when I left ya…. we were just about ready for my Dive Club Christmas party……. we made it to that —- As a rule I don’t like doing Christmas stuff that early in the month (1st)……… can you believe it is December already ????? This year has been almost out of control~!  but I digress……… we went to the Christmas party and the club did a great job setting the event up. Pretty decorations, what I thought was pretty decent food (more about that in a minute) – lots of drinks and folks that are becoming really good friends….. There was a ‘pirate’ gift exchange…. and for the relatively small crowd there – there were lots of fun gifts to be had….. our meal was spaghetti, chicken parmesan and some kind of vegetable thing that just did not look or sound good. I opted for a small bit of the spaghetti and the chicken parmesan along with a salad and a roll. The party went well into the night – even though most of the folks in the club knew they had to be up really early the next morning to help out with the big Iron Man competition being held the next day. Lots of fun and laughter made for a really fun evening – even though it was too early in the month [for me] to being doing that kind of stuff. I wound up in a very desired slot in the gift exchange, being almost the very last one to be called – and even though I did my level best – (I was allowed to ‘steal’ almost any one of the gifts I had seen up til then) – I still wound up with some kind of mug that I didn’t really care for – so I “gifted” it to a friend that really liked it. Live and learn……. Finally back at the condo at a semi-reasonably hour, I was still a skosh hungry, so I heated up a couple of pieces of KFC we had left over from the previous night, wolfed them down and fell into bed, knowing my alarm was going off at 04:30 hours. ( I had to be downtown for the Rescue Swimmer meeting by 05:30)…. I fell pretty quickly to sleep and was sawing logs pretty solid until 03:45…… that’s when I got hit with a belly pain I can only describe as being stomach punched by a charging 8000 lb buffalo…… OMG that is a nasty way to wake up~!!!

Well Dammit Emmit~! I’m at my 500 words already….. so I’m gonna put up some pictures for you, starting back where my laptop (actually it was a joint effort between phone and laptop) malfunctioned….. stay with me the next couple of days to get caught up…….

Good Night Ya’ll …… Thankx for stopping in~!

Nothin’ for ya tonight…… spent the day watching movies and the pelicans still dive bombing. Sorry….. I’ll put up some older pictures you may have not seen (or remember)

Good night Ya’ll —– Thankx for stopping in~!

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Not a lot to ramble about tonight…. spent the bulk of my day shopping for Christmas gifts for our grandchildren while my Queen got some small errands ran. Happy to report all errands are now ran and Christmas presents for the grand babies are done~!! I hear that Amazon is shutting down for the rest of the week because they made their quota for the week~~  😉

We (I) have a fairly busy week coming up…… not that I think you honestly care — but I may miss a post here and there because of it and it gives you some insight to our week…….. Saturday night we are having my dive club Christmas party…..followed [very shortly] by a big Triathlon here on the island the next morning. I have to be down on the boardwalk (downtown) at 05:30 the next morning. What does the 0 stand for in 05:30…? 0h my good it’s early~~~! A little humor from A1C Adrian Cronauer and the movie Good Morning Vietnam. Guess I’ll have to behave myself at the Christmas party in order to make that assignment….. but I signed up for it – and I will be there. Should be interesting…. bobbing around in the water and watching a hundred or so swimmers swim past me. I feel a lot more ready for the assignment since I have completed most of my Rescue Diver training. Crossing my fingers I don’t need to rescue anybody (for their sake) but feel prepared in case I do.

All that is followed up by a 09:00 certification dive at the Frederiksted Pier on Wednesday which is Part I of my rescue diver hands on training. I should get that completed just in time to get back and get a shower and head out to the East end of the island for my audition with a group called Electric Andy to possibly be their drummer~! I’m nervous and excited all at the same time…..kind of like the tests I recently finished……I know I can do it – just have to beat out the nerves part of it. Thursday morning I have my 2nd of 2 certification dives to get my final certification to be a Rescue Diver. I’m not so worried about the hands on tests…. I’m still confident in my abilities and not overly worried about them.

So – mostly a full week for the old retired guy — new certification and maybe a new gig getting to play drums for a fun band. (I’ve heard them play and like their selections) They play a lot newer stuff than I’m used to playing – but I like to think I’m up for it. Wish me luck and keep your fingers crossed for me please….

I’m putting up some pictures that will probably look a little familiar to you — they were taken on the dive I just showed you over the last couple of days – big difference….. this photographer had a light on her camera. You should be able to see the difference in the quality of her pictures versus mine.

Photo credit: Jackie Weichman – Adventures in Diving STX

Good night Ya’ll —— Thankx for stopping in~!

This be me zooming in for a shot  : )

Dive Master Mitch Nestor – Adventures in Diving STX

Me popping up out of a cubby…..

Me again… cruising along at about 90′

Beautiful brain coral

fellow diver…….

I guess a tad bit worried about the academic’s I had facing me today, I didn’t sleep as well as I would have liked and was up a damn site earlier than I would have liked. I have never been one to sail through tests of any kind, although over the years, I have found – I worry about them a hellva lot more than I probably needed to…. but still – in my advancing age, coming up against learning of two different fields that I am not overly versed in had me a lot more worried than I wanted to be. I felt I had did an adequate job reading and learning the course materials, it’s just something about knowing you’re gonna be tested on it….. puts that little added pressure on you, that makes it hard on your nerves….. well, mine anyway~~ The Instructor showed up promptly at 09:00 and set in almost immediately to his task. First part of the course was the Emergency First Aid piece and while I was once a Red Cross instructor in this field (a 100 years ago) I was still nervous. The Instructor did a good job demonstrating everything and keeping me calmed down for the practical application piece of it. Pleasantly spooky how much of the material I had retained – although new knowledge (for 2018) was considerably different in 1976 when I had my training…. like, nobody knew what a protective barrier was or an AED was…. or being able to pull a cell phone out of your pocket to make a phone call for EMS services…… but through paying attention and Instructor prompts I managed to pass the 50 question test only missing 2 questions. We moved on to the actual Rescue Diver part of the course – and once again I only missed 2 questions out of another 50. Content with my knowledge of the material – the Instructor is now setting up times for a 2 day course for actual field application of what I have learned…. water rescue. I am pumped and looking forward to it~! It will probably be later next week – so really gives me a lot to look forward to~!

While I was doing my “Schoolin“, my queen had spent the day being pampered….. getting a nice long massage (compliments of a gift certificate from a Daughter) her nails done and her eyebrows. She came back to find me dutifully working on line resolving Christmas orders that didn’t go as planned the night before….. that’ll teach me to drink and shop~! After we set down for drinks and some NYPD Blues – we noticed a guy with snorkel, mask, fins and spear gun heading out off our beach. We watched him off and on until he finally appeared an hour or so later with an impressive bag of fish, which he sat down and set into cleaning them. I couldn’t contain myself – so I grabbed a bottle of nice cold water and walked out and offered it to him. We were soon engaged in a conversation about reef life just off of our little beach. A local guy who owns the lot next door with plans of opening a Sushi restaurant and maybe a small Casino. I could have chatted the rest of the evening with him, but he was busy cleaning his catch – which included a nice Lobster he got “just for his mama”. Got to respect that~! Over my limit already…… so stopping here……

Good Night Ya’ll ….. Thankx for stopping in~!

Lobster for Mama…..

Up again entirely too friggin’ early……. but hey…. options are mighty thin at this point~ Hung out catching up on FB and the rest of the world. Finally got the ping I was waiting for and we went up to Blues to meet an guy who is doing some electrical work for me up there. Wound up staying about an hour and a half longer than we intended to – but it was worth it. I got to catch up chatting with Jim about their cruise……. Good times.

We came back to the condo and spent the rest of the afternoon drinking and ordering Christmas presents for Grand Kids….. a combination that works out nicely for the Grand Kids, but not quite so nicely for Oma & Pa-paws bank account — but again — it’s all good….. we can’t take it with us and we [[I]] love spending it on my Grand kids….   😉

In a nut shell – that’s about it….. had several opportunities for pictures and missed every friggin’ one of them…..oh well….. will put up what is probably the rest of my dive pictures, so guess I’ll have to get busy and get you all some more pictures…   🙂

Good night Ya’ll —– Thankx for stopping in~!

That’s about 30’of water and it’s the bottom you’re looking at~~

Woke up again much earlier than I would like, but something I am slowly getting used to even though I am trying to go to bed at a decent hour…… retirement…. not ALL it’s cracked up to be…………. Had the President of Fish With a Vet show up at 08:30 to go over the books and discuss outstanding issues. Something I thought would take 1 – 1.5 hours, took almost 3.5 hours, but lots of stuff discussed that needed it. Next years ‘books’ should be in much better shape………….
Decided we needed to go up t Blues Backyard BBQ for their “opening” night returning from what sounded like a very intriguing cruise. All the ‘regulars’ were up for the return of our spot – and what was supposed to be an hour or so of drinks, rapidly and easily turned into almost 4 hours of great conversation, good friends and a good time before last call was belted out.

Back safely at the condo – showers out of the way…we are winding down for what is hopefully a great nights sleep….. Here are more pix from my dive the other day since I don’t have much else to carry on about………

Good night Ya’ll —— Thankx for stopping in~!

A classic lazy Sunday going on here, so not a lot to ramble about today. I did see where the fundraiser we went to yesterday raised over $14,000.00 for the family – which is amazing for an island this small. We watched up to 10 Pelicans and 3 Sandpipers out in the bay diving for their dinners and I spent a small part of the day shopping for Christmas presents for Grand Kids….. one entire family done already and as the other lists come in – I’ll get them. Shopping on-line is the only way to shop for kids~!

Now, gonna leave you with some more pictures from the dives yesterday~~~

Good Night Ya’ll …… Thankx for stopping in~!