Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition
In which we find ourselves in another part of the world
I’ve spent the last two days attending a software training session, held at the House of Sweden, home to the embassies of both Sweden and Iceland. It’s a triumph of modern Scandinavian design.
Yesterday’s rain and fog gave way to windy sun today, two very different views of the Potomac.
My home this week was the little conference center hotel at Gallaudet University.
The campus is beautiful, situated behind a tall fence in a neighborhood that is just beginning a period of gentrification.
The little breakfast restaurant was nice, staffed by deaf people as is only to be expected. I communicate a lot, and I felt really alone being so utterly unable to talk to these folks. They understood me pretty well… I was clueless.
But that’s why we invented the Internet. It turns out that Thank You is even easier to sign than to say… and so I tried it and it worked! One phrase made a big difference, to me at least, even though I think my accent was off.
Stuck in airport sucks.
Stuck in airport directly under the TV speaker playing Republican debate sucks purple donkey dick.
Heard about this place forever, finally made a pilgrimage yesterday. Really really good.
To go see Star Wars, of course.
Just as we were enjoying our last painkillers yesterday before leaving for home, the annual Puppy Parade was assembling on the Boardwalk. This year’s theme was “Arabian Nights.” Most of the dogs were stoic, or even enthusiastic, about the whole thing. That little puppy is available for adoption…
It looked like a fun chance for the townies to get together, even though it was rainy.
High society dogs. But if you look carefully in the background, you’ll see that this sort of thing is not for everybody. The Dude Abides, but he’s going diving and not wearing a sweater. 
All week long, it’s been fresh wahoo on the menu just about everywhere. The first night, it was a big steak cooked pretty rare, yummy. The next night, a smaller slab, cooked through. Also good, but not as luscious. Then, we saw it blackened, creoled, gumbo’d, etc., and it became a joke about how long they could stretch out the fish before finally giving up and tossing it out to the tarpons who hang around the boardwalk waiting for scraps.
Yesterday, then, imagine our surprise to see this walk by… next week’s wahoo!
There’s another commentary here about fishing. Although we didn’t go out on a charter boat this tip, it’s instructive to compare the big cabin cruisers, $300 reels, etc., with the two guys in flip flops with a string who actually catch fish…
After Hurricane Hugo destroyed the old F’sted pier, they towed all the wreckage a couple miles away and dumped it in 80-120′ off the coast. Now, it’s a pretty cool dive site, a real-life Waterworld set.
My intrepid divemaster Jenny takes on a lionfish
A Southern sting ray unimpressed with my desire to get up close and take pictures
A playful smooth trunkfish
Seahorses are one of the stars of St. Croix’s western side. Getting close enough and steady enough to shoot a decent picture of the little critters is the best test of Peak Performance Buoyancy I can think of. Even though I passed my PPB dive, which involved swimming through a hula hoop suspended from the bottom, I still have a lot of work to do in that regard. And how do you kick backwards in flippers???
Or,
La la la la down down down down
Normally I would have something clever here to introduce this guy who we saw snorkeling. So, a snippet of lyric seemed right. But who actually knows the lyrics? Certainly not me, it turns out.
We took the Snorkeling Adventure tour to nearby Buck Island this morning. Big waves bounced us around and churned up the bottom pretty bad, and a lot of the coral formations, although dramatic in form, seem pretty bleached and dead. Still, we did see quite a few fish, including this blue tang clan.
As we got off the boat, a lady about to board asked if it was worth the money. Hard to say… As tourists you pretty much have to pay if you want to go out there. But having gone once, we wouldn’t pay to do it again. Box checked!
Here’s a GoPro pic with the macro / fisheye lens in place… not needed at this distance but it came out pretty neat anyway. I bought a neat gadget with a flip on red filter (for deeper water) and separate fisheye, so I can choose options as needed.
The distillery tour, which debouches (debauches?) into the tasting room and bar, turned out to be the cheapest drinks on the island. Here, our tour guide shows what 12 years of evaporation looks like… the missing volume is called the Angel’s Share.
And then demos her skills behind the counter… Incidentally, the guy on the left was on the dolphin dive with me earlier in the day, so we got to coach each other in how to make people roll their eyes at the story.
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 