I can see clearly now 

   
   
Besides being shiny and double-paned, our new windows all open: the big picture windows have an operating panel on the bottom, and the parking lot side are full sliders. Plus, the parking lot view is much improved without the 6-inch crossbar exactly at eye level. Cross-ventilation will make a huge difference in keeping the living room cool. 

Home Depot sent a big tough Russian crew to do the job, and I’ll admit to thinking briefly about Liam Neeson and his very special skills. In the end, the guys turned out to be quite charming, and exceptionally efficient. In at 10, out at 4:30.  

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Make every day a holiday 

 Just the other evening, our quest for 10,000 steps took us into one of the public housing complexes on the other side of the tracks. We saw an entirely too-active traffic pattern in the parking area, and several apartments sported a defiantly festive lighting scheme. 

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Happy birthday, little sister

It’s very cool that Big Brother remembered Lee’s birthday, even if a little jarring to be reminded that they know EVERYTHING about us. But, at least we told them about the birthday directly, so that’s pretty understandable. What’s far less understandable is how they know she has a fondness for model railroads and so posted that link to Miniatur Wunderland… or is that just a coincidence…

Lee birthday

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C’sted Puppy Parade

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. 

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Don’t eat fish on Monday

 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…

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USCG SPC-LE

This bad boy was parked at the boardwalk yesterday. It turns out to be a US Coast Guard Special Purpose Craft — Law Enforcement, designed for drug interdiction and “migrant operations,” and one of three stationed in the USVI.

900 hp is a whole lotta get up and go for a lightweight 33′ boat. The top speed is listed at “more than 50 knots” and if you could keep it from simply flying into the air, I bet you could get a whole lot more.

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Armageddon 

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.


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Enough diving already 

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

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Seahorse 

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???

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More Scuba pics

Sorry to bore you… The GoPro worked really well.

Some kind of cool coral

Atlantic spadefish

Sea cucumber  wrasses of some sort

Feathery tubeworms  

Jacks? Snappers?

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Ooooh 

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.

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