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Greetings from St. Croix on this Halloween……. day started out by me rolling out a heckva lot earlier than I cared for, but I had to be up long enough to get good and woke up to get the truck up to the garage by 08:00.  As I said, I was having extreme brake issues. I thought (and was hoping) it was a brake pad that had slipped, but NOOoooooo….. turned out it was a warped rotor. I had to leave the truck, so I hiked my big hungover butt the mile or so back to the condo. It was hot…. how hot ? DAMNED hot~! I did stop and take a bunch of pictures of flowers along the way for those of my readers that enjoy the local flower varieties. Finally made it back and set down for some A/C and a bite to eat while we watched NYPD Blues. Finally got a call about 15:00 to say the truck was ready…. so off I went, walking that mile or so back to the garage…… it was even hotter…. made sweating out all that hooch from last night a lot easier~! Picked the truck up and $ 306.00 dollars later – the truck is once again good to go…… Came home and went out and worked on clearing out a section of Sargassum on the beach for easy passage for baby turtles in case we got any, while my Queen made a wonderfully delicious meatloaf for dinner…. tonight was to be the last night for babies for the next couple of days. I had just set down to start working on this, when my bride (who was out on the patio looking for babies) started hollering. I jumped up, fell over my feet trying to grab my camera and finally made it out onto the beach…… Angie’s flashlight revealed a small string of turtles climbing desperately to get up out of the large hole that had been dug right over top of them. I got some video for you of it – I think you’ll like it. I took a couple of pictures and then stood back watching to make sure they were all heading in the right direction. As it turns out – some of them were getting confused by the white light and heading for it – so I told Angie to turn her light off and we used the infrared from there on out. I guess it’s a good thing I cleared out a path for them to get into the water. Just like the last time – the whole thing was over in about 6-8 minutes. We wandered around the area for another 10 minutes or so, plucking little turtles out of bushes and some of the big holes that are all over the beach. I personally carried probably a dozen different of them little dudes down to the edge of the water. So incredibly unreal to be able to do that~!! And we still have 40 possible nests to go~!! That’s my day…. I hope you all had a great Halloween and didn’t eat too much candy…. We didn’t have any trick or treaters, so I guess WE’LL have to eat those two big bags of Kit-Kats ourselves……  😉

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

 

BABIES~!!!!

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Greetings and salutations Ya’ll……..gotta say up front…. probably had about that [  ] much too much to drink to be on here writing right now…… but I have this deep seated need to regale you all of my day today…… with that being said… I think I have some nice pictures for you (not sure, haven’t looked at them yet) but I deeply appreciate my readers…. all 12+ of you  😉    I think that is funny as hell because I know I have close to 200 of you that are reading my ramblings on here……. Our day started out like usual…..after a less than stellar nights sleep. I tried some stuff a Daughter recommended for promoting ‘good’ sleep…. but it didn’t work worth a damn…… I’ll try again tonight, even though entirely too much alcohol may negate the process……

Like I was saying… the day started out as usual…. no new turtle diggings or sightings last night. The waves are big enough that we have a pretty steady stream of ‘surfer “dudes” ‘ walking along our beach to catch the ‘big waves’. It’s entertaining watching them – but I personally like watching the Pelicans better.

We had a meeting with Fish with a Vet today — we arrived early enough to get a bite to eat before the meeting started. My bride had a ‘Philly cheese steak’  sammich and I tried the Fish-N-Chips. My bride said he sammich wasn’t bad, which is a good thing, because my Fish-N-Chips was disgusting…. but hey, you don’t know until you try it. Definitely won’t be trying it again…… A really good meeting ensued after the rest of the group showed up. It’s really nice what this outfit is doing for the Veterans on the island. With minimal effort on my part, I got promoted to Club Treasurer, thankx in a large part to my bride who advertised I was “really good” with spread sheets…… but I am happy to help out a really good organization. After the meeting, I got to know one of the Captains of one of the boats for the tournament coming up. He wanted to understand what kind of fishing I wanted to do (not tournament stuff) and he said he is going to ‘hook me up’ for some heavy duty fishing…. the kind of heavy duty fishing where they have to strap your happy a$$ into the chair to keep you from being pulled off the deck of the boat…….. bring it brother — I can’t wait~!!! Meeting and chat finally ended and we headed back to the condo….. with a quick detour into Blues Backyard BBQ…… decided to stop for a drink….. BAAAAHAAAAaaaaaa..  A drink…. it had been a little bit since we have been up there… and that ‘drink’ turned into many…… a great bunch of folks up there and it was good to catch up with them…… Safely back home and waiting for a clear brain to appear to finish this…. HaHaHaHa….. sure hope you enjoy my booze induced ramblings….. I’m excited to see my pictures I took today….. I hope they look as good I as I hope they are…….

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

Our view for lunch~

Captain Ben……

For Becky~~~

Started the new week out this morning with no new turtle diggings nor babies last night – but we aren’t “expecting” any babies until tomorrow night or Wednesday. Had another beautiful sunrise and ironically enough, got the best picture of it by shooting to the West. Just took the one picture, but you’ll see what I mean.

The Sargassum seaweed continues to pile in and you can see it stretched all over the place out on the open water….. sure hope that stops soon because I’m not sure turtle babies can navigate that mess we have out there now….. and it is entirely too much for this old fat boy to try and keep raked up at this point~! What I can do if I get lucky enough to see them, is gather them up in my shirt and wade my big ole a$$ out into clear water and let them loose~! I’ll dang sure do it if I need to- you can take that to the bank~!

We must have some weather or something building out there as the waves are increasing in size and intensity…. You get 4 or 5 lines of those breaking at once and it almost sounds like thunder….. nice, very, very nice. Got a little bit of video of it for you, but not sure I can get the big video loaded on here – if not….FB  🙁

Ran up tot the local garage today to make an appointment for the truck. I either have a brake shoe that has slipped out of position or a rotor that has warped that I need to get fixed fairly soon….. this island is not a place where a brake failure would be a good thing….. Sure hope it ain’t a warped rotor. $$$$$$$$$$

Rest of the day was NYPD Blues and watching those big a$$ pelicans soaring over head. Had 7 of them out there this morning dive bombing. Every time I bring my camera out to try and catch some of their formation flying, they disappear. I don’t know if they think I have a gun or what….. but I’ll keep trying. Just started season # 3 of NYPD Blues…. I sure don’t remember it being that ‘racy’. Some of those scenes are almost soft porn……. and that was 1994 (the year their in now on the show).

That’s about it. We have another meeting with the Fish with a Vet group tomorrow to discuss final preparations for the big tournament coming up and Veterans Day activities, so that’ll get us out and an opportunity for some new pictures~!

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

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After I posted last night, I took my shower and relaxed a little bit watching some Big Bang Theory (I love that show) — My bride had already went to bed, so I was enjoying the show and relaxing. Around 22:30 I went out for my last smoke for the night and there about 10′ off of the balcony was another beautiful green turtle, busy working away at a nest. I could tell from the way she was throwing sand, she had not yet started on the nest for her eggs, so I went back and for another episode of TBBT. When it was over, I eased out and could tell she was working on the nest for her eggs. Multiple articles say that once they are in that portion of the dig -and- while they are laying their eggs, they go into a type of trance and are not as easily spooked, which through trial and error on a bunch of turtles…. I have come to believe. I grabbed my phone and my flashlight and eased out near her. I took several pictures of her, before coming back in and going to bed. Freshly showered and ready for bed I did not want fight the salt, sand and bugs for any other pictures, plus I didn’t want to disturb her any further. Woke up the next morning to see, she indeed laid her eggs and then moved on to a second location. She apparently did a little more digging in a second hole, but quit and left. It’ll remain a mystery to me why they do that, but tracks indicated it was just her….. go figure – but that was holes # 48 & # 49. All in that one little bitty area of our beach.

The rest of my day was pretty tame other than standing outside watching these huge pelicans do their thing in the water. We are once again bein besieged with that nasty Sargassum seaweed but it doesn’t seem to be deterring the Pelicans. I have seen them dive right into the middle of a wad of that stuff, going after their dinner. Yuck~! I guess maybe it is a little bit like a salad for them…. who knows  😉  A little later in the afternoon, a small rainbow popped up quite a way out. Clouds had built up during the day and I guess some of them held just enough moisture to create the rainbow. I snapped some pictures of it as well. They are pretty in their own right. Even more so framed by palm trees and that beautiful sky and water around them. I hope you enjoy the pictures. Tomorrow is a new week, with Halloween stuck in the middle of it. Not sure if we’ll have any Trick or Treaters as we rarely see any kids in the complex. There are multiple Halloween parties happening around the island – but not sure if we’re attending any of them.

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

 

Sargassum messing up my beach~~ : (

The white thing is the ferry coming back from St. Thomas

 

 

Sorry all — another day of breakfast, crazy blue skies, fabulous warm weather, palm trees, pelicans and NYPD Blue and I’m not going to try and make a post out of them tonight. I hope you enjoy what you read here – and I don’t want it to become boring or repetitive…. so on some nights…. I’m just gonna have to leave it at this…..

Good night Ya’ll ……. Thankx for checking in~!

 

Rolled out this morning after a mostly decent night…. not counting the one unpleasant episode of greasy chicken overload (unload as it were)…… Got caught up on the morning stuff and unbelievably was hungry enough that I wanted breakfast. I kinda thought I’d be able to go for a week or so before I needed to eat anything else….. I had a hankering for [weirdly] pancakes and my Queen whipped up a quick batch. We watched some more of NYPD Blues and watched a movie I was told I need to watch called The Boys of Company C. I was very under impressed with the movie. Before we resumed our marathon of NYPD Blues episodes – I had to stop and make some phone calls to get our [ridiculously expensive] health insurance renewed — jeez what a rip off~! I won’t get into it now or else I’ll never get calmed down enough to go to sleep later.

During the last couple of days, we have had a small group of Pelicans kind of move into our section of the beach. We apparently have also got small fish in the water as well, as these pelicans (sometimes up to 6 of them) spend the day soaring over top of us and then out over the water, only to dive head first after their meals. Most of these dives are happening from about 20′-25’… but I have seen some from well over 40′. It has become a game with us to see which ones actually get their meals, as they very distinctly stretch their bills skyward after the dive to swallow their meal if they were successful. I just wish the camera on my phone was ‘good enough’ to get better shots of them doing their thing. I took a couple of videos trying to capture it, but all will probably be too big to put on here – but I’ll try. These things fly directly over top of us sometimes – often dripping sea water as they do. You want to keep an eye on them when they come over as they also ‘take a dump’ while they’re flying. Trust me when I tell you – you don’t want to get hit with that load. I have seen them do it multiple times – and yowser —- these dudes unload~! You’d think they just finished a KFC meat feast or something. And of course…. with a diet of raw fish and sea water….. probably not something you’d want to be splattered with….. or even smell….. this could digress quickly – so I’ll stop here…… No turtle babies [yet]—–

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

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I think I have shared this once before – but it was a favorite of my Dad’s and very appropriate for tonight’s blog:

Here is the story of the Pel-i-can.
His beak can hold more than his belly can.
He holds enough food in his beak,
for almost a week.
I don’t know how in the hell he can~~!

 

 

Well I made my night dive and survived~! It was more of what I expected of a night dive…… went out and sat on the boat and watched a GORGEOUS sunset and then turned to watch an equally GORGEOUS moon rise……. and then stepped off the back of the boat into inky darkness. Because of reported rip currents, we did not go to the dive site I was hoping for (Armageddon). Disappointed, but it was a safety decision….. so you go with the flow (or without, as it were)  😉   Really under impressed with the dive site we wound up at, called the Aquarium. Maybe during daylight, it might be a good dive – but certainly was not impressed for a night dive. I saw a couple of sting rays, a crab, some fish but not much else….. and I screwed up almost every picture I took again. This whole pictures at night thing – is going to take some work I believe…… did get one decent video (of one the sting rays) – the pictures left a lot to be desired. I deleted most of them. I guess I could just take video all the time since I seem to get that down pretty good – and then pull stills out of the video…… HMMmmmm — I may have to give that a try. I tried to give some notice on FB last night after I got home – but good ole island internet was doing it’s thing and wouldn’t let me load diddly…….  Dammit Emmit~!

Got up this morning feeling like I had been rode hard and put up wet ( my bride got me about 6 sheets to the wind when I got home last night)— but a handful of Anacin and a half of bottle of water – and it didn’t take me long to be back up to snuff. I eventually made us a small breakfast and we settled in for some boob tube action. We have just started watching NYPD Blues….. I used to love that show…. and streaming it – there are no commercials and is uncensored… which makes it even better  😉   (I guess we have a thing about “Blues”)  Shortly after lunch, we decided we had some shopping to get out of the way – so we went to the West side K-mart and then stopped on the way back at the grocery store. $400.00 later – we are restocked and good to go again for a while. We settle back into some more NYPD Blues and decided we were starving. We both agreed that KFC would be a good thing, so I ran up to the local KFC and depleted them of most of their on hand supplies. Came back and turned NYPD Blues back on and Oh My Goodness what we did to that bunch of KFC…… actually kind of embarrassing…… but OH SO GOOD….. we are both absolutely miserable now after Chicken, tenders, smashed taters, gravy, coleslaw, corn on the cob …. all followed up by Strawberry cheese cake…….. tie me to an ant hill and smother my ears in jelly was that ever good……!! So – completely miserable (but happy) now – we are going out on a kind of a regular basis to look for baby turtles as we have another nest due to hatch tonight or in the next day or so…..will try and catch them so we can get you some more pictures…. Gonna go crawl in bed soon and hopefully sleep off this meat coma I’m in right now…….

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

As many of you might have seen….. I’m doing another night dive tonight – at what I believe will be my new favorite dive spot. It is called Armageddon. It was a fantastic site during the day (it had the sharks!) I can’t hardly to wait to see what the darkness will bring out~! I wanted to get a couple lines on here for you, as I probably won’t get back until about 21:00 or so and it will be much to late to process what will hopefully be a lot of good dive pictures for you and get on here. I will do my best to make it worth your while in pictures though for tomorrow.

Rest of the day was fairly easy….. lounged for awhile before getting into a 45 minute drama with the Dell customer support team. What a bunch of wankers~! Was so mad I was shaking and finally wound up hanging up on them……. we decided that we would go up Blues for ‘breakfast’ since it was almost 11:00 by then and a cold beer and another Salmon sammich sounded like a really good idea. Turns out it was~! The beer(s) were ice cold and the sammich was just as delicious as the last one. I figured it would be all I had to eat for the long day I had in store, so I got a BLTG as a bonus (Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato & Guacamole) MmMmm good~!  Came back to let our meal settle and watch the boob tube. Tried to find a series someone recommended to my Queen called The Ranch starring Sam Elliot…. but Amazon Prime would not pull it up, so we wound up renting a movie called The Hero – with Sam Elliot…… don’t waste your time or money on that one…….

Now I am sitting here writing this – getting ready to take off for my night dive as soon as I finish, so…….

Have a good evening Ya’ll —– Thankx for stopping by~!

Rolled out this morning after a very pitiful night’s sleep. I thought I would sleep the sleep of kings after the day I had yesterday (that whole manual labor thing)…. Once again, I think I was subject to being ‘too’ tired……. that and my Queen was having her own tough night. There was a lot of moaning and whimpering and shivering… all, always calmed by pulling her into my back and rubbing and patting her touchas……. I sometimes think she does that simply because she knows my response — but the end result is always the same, her having a great night sleeps and my nights sleep leaving a “little bit to be desired”…… I guess that’s one of the reasons we are still married after 40+ years together……. either way though – I am hoping to ‘catch up’ at least a little bit on tonight’s sleep. I made us a nice breakfast as we lounged and I nursed some slightly more than average sore muscles. I didn’t hurt as bad as I was expecting, but it was painfully obvious, I had not used that set of muscles to that degree in a long, loooooong time. Breakfast finished, we settled in for some boob tube. We had started a new made for Prime series called Goliath with Billy Bob Thorton….. we were wrapping up the second and final season of it. Mildly entertaining, I see why it only went through 2 seasons. We spend the rest of the day lounging and trying to work out sore muscles. Got to be around dinner time and the electricity went out(16:10 hours)…. we went and visited with friends then came back for drinks on the patio enjoying that wonderful cool breeze while we waited for the juice to come back on. (which includes internet). My Queen made minute steaks with taters and peas after the electricity came back on an hour and a half later…. Aaah island life…..

We have now resumed our watch for baby turtles when we go out to smoke. I am popping aspirin to keep tight muscles at bay and looking forward to the nights sleep I was hoping for last night. A couple of new pictures for you that I took of clouds and the almost full moon we have going on down here…… I’ll put up some more pix I’m not sure you’ve seen or not……. Not sure what tomorrow brings….. other than the standard, blue skies, nice trade wind and that beautiful, beautiful ocean.

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

An almost full moon on the rise

 

Again…. that is the moon~!

 

Rolled out this morning after an AMAZING night with baby turtles~!!!  I just have to try and relate a little bit more just how awesome that experience was.  I just replied to a brother about it in the comments on the post. I’m pretty sure, if I laid out a 1000 word blog, I would never adequately express just how friggin’ cool that experience was for me. Now understand (for readers that don’t know me as well some others might.) I have SCUBA dived with sharks, I have stepped out the door at 10,000′ AT NIGHT [multiple times] from an aircraft, I have photographed multiple weddings, gave away 4 different brides at weddings, watched 4 different live births (of human beings) and I am here to tell you – the turtles hatching was in the top 20 coolest things I have ever experienced~!!! It was freakin’ AWESOME~!!!   I actually had goose bumps for a little bit. To watch all them little hummers, fighting for their lives and making that breakneck run to the Sea — was just freakin’ AWESOME~! Then when I got to ‘rescue’ a couple of them and help them into the water…… awesome, awesome, awesome~!!! With an almost full moon, the sand almost glowing in the moonlight, listening to the surf pounding into the beach, watching that little “river” of them little guys going for all they were worth, heading for the sea……. I just cannot tell you what it did for/to me…… seriously – those couple of minutes are absolutely burned into my brain and I love it~! And to think there is a possibility of seeing that another 40+ times~!!! I count my self as damn lucky to have got to experience that….. as I said, the whole thing lasted 8 minutes – TOPS~! How lucky we were to be out there at that exact moment. Yes – we could set up chairs and sit there and scan the possible areas – but to me, it makes it a lot more special, that we don’t. That something puts us out there at the exact perfect moment. Whether you want to call it God, faith, just plain old luck….. whatever…… just plain ole amazing…… and the best part of it is……. is we have the chance for it to happen…. over and over and over again….. until at least the middle of December [so far].

Okay….. I’ll give it a rest (but it really was freakin’ awesome~!) My day started out like usual until an early morning ‘ping’ asked if I’d be interested in helping out at a job site ‘moving heavy things’. I had offered that particular service to a friend and this morning, he took me up on it. I showed up at the job site and was immediately put to work moving heavy things. Specifically, small boxes of a specific type of aggregate, each weighing about 45-50 pounds. A couple of young lady’s there, jumped in and helped and moved every bit as many boxes as I did – -125 in total. These were picked up off of pallets, loaded into the backs of pickups, driven across the island and unloaded on to pallets again in a storage container. The second half of the day was a tad more challenging…… as it turned out, I wound up picking up and loading another 4 pickup loads….. and subsequently unloading/loading into the container…. 1.5metric tons of a blue powder used in a flooring application — all in the form of 96 Lb. bags……… all of that on about a dozen bottles of water (and 1 bottle of Rehydrate) and a Payday bar….. by the time I got home…. I was done….. tired….. sore……and blue (color of the powder). Now that I have had a [much needed] shower….. a bite to eat (compliments of the fine folks at Blues Backyard BBQ and a wife that ran up to get it while I showered) and 3 Anacin’s….. I’m better….. really tired but better….. ought to be interesting to see what I feel like in the morning. I think I’m going to amend my offer to ‘friend’ to offer to help move semi-moderately heavy things~~~~~  😉

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

These used to cost me $ 8.00 in the states……. 🙁 

Looking West at Sun RISE this morning~~

My view from where I was working today~

‘Work’ me….

Getting my Pappa Smurf on  😉

Me and My Queen~~ <3