I've been wanting to put my two cents in about the upcoming election, but I can't come up with anything that can be distilled down to a couple of paragraphs. Arguing about politics is only slightly more productive than arguing about religion, and at least the perceived closeness of this year's race is going to get more people out to the polls who sat on their collective hands last time thinking their votes didn't count (turns out, of course, that in some cases they didn't!). So whoever wins we can consider the vote to be at least a little more of a representative sample of the will of the people.



I've said all year that if Bush gets re-elected I'll have lost any remaining faith I have in the human race. To think after the pudding he's made of Iraq, his inability and unwillingness to work with other countries on anything such that most have united against us, record-high prices for oil, record deficits after taking office with a surplus, a brazen disinterest in the environment, a fear of scientific advancements that could save millions of lives, allowing the assault weapons ban to expire, millions of jobs going overseas, and his insistence that pigheadedness and refusing to acknowledge the existence of more than one side to complex issues are in fact virtues, that people will still turn out in droves to vote for him on Tuesday is unfathomable.



Is Kerry the answer to all our problems? Of course not, no presidential candidate ever is, but I'm inclined to think he has a greater potential for making things better, not just for us in the here and now, but for future generations. Beth's brother, a political agnostic if there ever was one, said to me a few months ago that he felt it doesn't really matter who is in charge because it doesn't have any direct effect on him personally. I couldn't respond immediately because my breath was taken away by the utter shortsightedness of that statement. Of course it has an effect on you, in how much money you take home, in what you have to spend it on, on whether you feel safe travelling abroad, on how long you'll live because of new medical advances. And even if it didn't, what about our kids, who'll have to live with our environmental mistakes longer than we will, who can take advantage of education programs as long as they aren't sacrificed to grandiose tax cuts, who'll have less money to spend because of the debts we accumulate, thereby decreasing their standard of living in relation to our own?



A lot of people like to make the presidential race a one-issue decision, like "well, I'm voting for Bush because Kerry will raise taxes", but you can't simplify it like that. There are a lot of variables, and they each deserve consideration, other than the "Which candidate would you rather have a beer with?" question, which should just be ignored (and is moot, since Bush doesn't drink any more). The country should not be run by the guy who is the most folksy, it should be run by the guy with the more compelling and all-encompassing vision. He may not be right on every count, he may not be able to succeed on everything he wants to do even given the chance. The senior Bush got booted out because his mantra was "stay the course", keep everything the way it is. The junior one doesn't seem to be straying from that line very much, and I personally just don't see that the course we're on is one worth preserving, and not only that, it is inherently dangerous on a number of fronts to continue to do so.



To be honest, it was kind of a disappointment when Kerry became the presumptive nominee, I didn't think he had the populist appeal that seems to be necessary these days to win, the way the Dean or Clarke had. But the Dems picked him more on substance than style, so if he's going to win, he's going to do it because what he says makes sense, not because he's a good ol' boy. God help us.

On several occasions Doctor Robbins, my piano teacher during my high school years, would say that in his day you couldn't consider yourself a real pianist unless you could sit down and play from a dozen or so Preludes and Fugues and six or seven Beethoven sonatas. Playing the WTC right now bores me to tears, but I started thinking a while back about the Beethoven challenge, given that since I've been playing more in the past few years I've been ignoring most everything prior to Chopin, and it seemed if I really did want to try out one of these amateur competitions one of these days, something from the classical period was probably a good idea.



So where better to start with Beethoven than the first movement of the first sonata, Op 2 no 1. It goes by quick (less than 4 minutes even with the repeat), and lo and behold after a few months of repetition, I had it memorized. So I thought, you know, I've always liked the Op 31 No 2 sonata, and had worked on it off and on for years but never studied it with anyone or performed it, I should try that one out, and within a couple of months, I had the first movement of that memorized. Then the Op 10 No 2 first movement, which I studied at NU and was my first performance there, although it never made a solo recital program. Then the Op 101 first movement, which I had worked on shortly after I moved to Boston. So now I've got four first movements memorized, and the first real test comes at next Saturday's soiree when I attempt to play the 2/1 from memory. It's a bit of a stretch, as I haven't played a memorized piece in public in nearly 20 years.



It could be that the power of memorization is coming back (I had it pretty good by 1986, when I stopped practicing) and things are getting easier to memorize again, but I think it helps that these are works with which I am pretty familiar, even if the 10/2 is the only one I'd actually memorized before. Next comes Op 22, then maybe another late one and then probably one of the biggies (Walstein, Appasionata, which are half-memorized anyway and, like Dr R used to say, basically play themselves), then that will be seven, and it will be time to go back and learn the last movements (we'll save the slow movements for last, since they seem to be the hardest to remember). Op 101 is the exception, but most of the others are pretty snappy, and each has a definite repetitive structure to it that makes it easier to memorize. There's really no reason to memorize them in order to play them better, but I would like to have the ability to sit down and play >something< on demand without the music in front of me if the occasion ever warrants itself (which it rarely does). And depending on how long this takes, then maybe we'll go for Chopin next. Just don't expect any of those Bach Preludes and Fugues any time soon.

I'm a bit disappointed that the Red Sox victory parade is tomorrow, a Saturday. The Patriots parades, in spite of being in the freezing cold, were kind of fun because you could go with your co-workers and blow off an hour or two of work. Having the parade on the weekend means you have to go with your family (who could care less), and use up your own free time.



They're predicting anywhere from 3 to 5 million people will stand along a three-mile parade route from Fenway to City Hall Plaza. We figured out this morning this means the crowd will be about 150 people deep on each side of the road. Even though it won't be freezing cold, that's a lot of people, never mind actually getting to the city and parking somewhere. Even Gary, who's a big Sox fan in the office, says he's staying home. "That's what they invented the tv for", he says. Even the pope only drew 2.5 million.



They also expect the parade to last three hours, even though the route is three miles long. That means they'll be travelling at one mph. Are they walking the whole thing? Hard to believe, but maybe. The Patriots rode in the duck tour boats (but, being the dead of winter, they all wore long leather coats that made them all look alike), that seemed to work well, they were up close, but not too close to the rabid fans. I say put the Sox in the duck tour boats and follow the marathon route all the way from the start line in Hopkinton. They could go by at 8 miles an hour (equivalent to a brisk run) and still be done in three hours. It would still be a better deal than those people who stand by the side of the road for the Tour de France all day, only to have the peloton swoop by in 15 seconds.

Sox win! Sox win!

Over the last couple of weeks, I've watched more baseball games from start to finish than maybe the rest of my life combined. The theory has always been for any postseason series that I'll watch as long as the local team is involved (except for hockey). Until the Pats started winning a few years ago, that was always good for a few games every couple of years, but no more. Now suddenly this year I saw the Sox sweep the Angels, watched all seven games with the Yankees (didn't quite make it to the end of game four), and now a four-game sweep of the Cardinals to be witness to a defining moment in Boston history.



I realize that may sound like hyperbole to those who don't live around here, but ever since I came to Boston lo these many moons ago, there are two things that everybody always talks about, where they were during the blizzard of '78, and how the Sox hadn't won a World Series since 1918. As Shaughnessy's column today says, the fact that the Red Sox seemingly had this streak of bad luck, culminating in the '86 series but continuing on since then up until game 7 of last year's ALCS with the Yankees, helped to define the city as a collection of rabid, loyal fans who were always the also-rans, who could never quite overcome the stigma, even if it was largely in their own collective minds, that they couldn't get it done. Meanwhile other teams like Florida and Arizona could grab a championship only a few years into their franchise history and wonder what all the fuss was about. At least for years Boston had the Celtics and Bruins to fall back on, but they've both started losing streaks of their own since the '80's, and besides it's just not the same as baseball.



Coming from Chicago, which has twice as many baseball teams, both with an even longer losing streak (and I believe neither has even been to the World Series since the Truman administration), it took a while to get caught up in the Red Sox mania, but even though I don't watch the games very often and only go to Fenway once every few years, I'd consider myself a Sox fan. If the Sox had ended up playing the Cubs in the World Series last year as it should have been, I would've been rooting for the Sox all the way, but otherwise I root for the Cubs too (hard to do these days).



It was great when the Patriots won the Superbowl. It was even better when they won it again. Now everyone here expects them to win. So far, they still do, but that bubble can only last for so long. Dynasties are hard to come by these days in any sport, and a Red Sox team that sinks back into mediocrity or, even worse, almost-greatness from whence it came, will be that much harder to bear now. On the other hand, what about a Red Sox team that re-signs Pedro and Varitek and comes roaring back next year to do it all again? It would be fun, to be sure, but it's possible that it just won't quite seem like the Red Sox we've been living with all these years.



As far as this year goes, in the end they made it look easy, the Cardinals never really showed up, so we all got a reprieve from the expected seven-game marathon with multiple extra-inning, five-hour games like we saw with New York. But even so, it was a lot of baseball. Now I'm going to go sleep for a week.

Sox win! Sox win!



After a jaw-dropping three-game thrashing at the hands of the Yankees, the most evil team in professional sports (at least, if you live around here), the Sox did what everyone thought they could do but no one really believed they would do and actually came back to win the ALCS by sweeping the next four games, something that not only has no team ever done before, but not even come close to doing. Debate will rage for years as to which is the bigger claim to fame, the spectacle of the Sox improbable comeback, or the depth of the Yankees' collapse.



The last time the Sox were in the World Series, I had only lived here a year and was still basically a Cubs fan, so while it would've been nice to win, their heart-wrenching loss didn't have that much of an effect on me personally. In 1986, after all, it had only been 68 years since their last World Series win, still better than the Cubs, so what was all the crying about? I don't think all this talk of a curse really took hold until the infamous blooper through the legs of Bill Buckner (a former Cub), and although you could hardly blame the whole thing on him, just like you can't blame the Cubs disaster last year on that Bartman guy, it would seem it's a natural inclination to pin a tragedy of this magnitude on a single incident. Last year in the ALCS, it was Grady Little not pulling out Pedro in the eighth inning while they still had the lead in Game 7. He got sacked for it, but would it have made a difference? We'll never know.



So not much chance of getting anything accomplished for yet another week while I spend long hard hours in front of the tv, staying up too late just to see what happens first hand. There will be marathon games and cringe-inducing plays and when things get interesting in the Cardinal half of an inning, I'll have my thumb on the "Last" button so I can flip over to Trading Spaces or something for a few minutes reprieve. Make no mistake, the Yankees were a drop in the bucket compared to the Cardinals, and even with the home field advantage (thanks to homers by Manny and Ortiz in the All-Star game) the Sox have their work cut out for them. Even if they don't win the Series, beating the Yankees in the playoffs exorcised several ancient demons, and it's hard to imagine the euphoria being any greater if they do win it all. But it would be nice to find out.

Went to a couple of concerts the week before last that I keep meaning to mention. Tuesday was the first piano concert of the season at Boston Conservatory, and it was a packed house that assembled to hear Ursula Oppens and Jerome Lowenthal play two-piano works by Debussy and Messaien. I've never seen either performer before (Oppens tenure at Northwestern started after I graduated), and while they were both score-bound, they produced an enjoyable, exciting program. The first half was the Debussy, some unfamiliar late work followed by the much more familiar orchestral Nocturnes, arranged by Ravel, which was the real crowd-pleaser.



Purely by accident, I ended up sitting between Michael Lewin and Janice Weber, and chatted with Ms. Weber beforehand and during the intermission about Messaien. The second half of the program was his Visions de l'Amen, a collection of seven dense, lush, dissonant works that I'd never heard before. Oppens and Lowenthal were in total command of the music, I think the lighting on stage wasn't optimal as Oppens kept squinting at the music as though she'd never seen it before, and Lowenthal is not a tall individual so they had trouble hitting the same chord at exactly the same time because with the music in the way they could barely see each other. There were no program notes, which doesn't do Messaien any favors, but Lowenthal translated the title of each movement ahead of time. The audience responded enthusiastically, but there were no encores, the scheduled program having served as enough of a workout for both performers and listeners in and of itself. For some reason, Dyer chose to attend a recital of minimalist piano music at NEC instead, but I can't imagine it was better than this.



Three days later I had to leave work early to pick up Mom at the airport anyway, so I left even earlier and went to the BSO for the first time this season to hear Yefim Bronfman play the Liszt 2nd Piano Concerto, conducted by Charles Dutoit. I believe I've heard Bronfman before in some equally noisy concerto, but this is the sort of repertoire he excels in, and he didn't disappoint. Dyer's review from the Thursday night concert had said the piano sounded bad, but maybe they wheeled out the wrong one by mistake because on Friday afternoon it was fine. Like most Liszt, the 2nd concerto is through-composed, with the same theme cropping up in a variety of ways, and the technical fireworks in the piece feel like an organic part of the whole rather than just tacked on for flashiness' sake. Bronfman was dead accurate and had no trouble being heard, but also providing a real feeling to the music without just making noise. Dutoit, who looked younger than I thought he would be, at least from a distance, kept everything under control in what must be some tricky entrances. I was inspired a few days later to order the music for both this and the Totentanz, the latter of which I have a few recordings that make me curious as to what the music actually looks like. The 2nd concerto is supposed to be the quieter, more introspective of the Liszt concertos, but while those may be the parts you remember at the end, there's plenty of octaves and glissandi and all the rest in between.



The rest of the program was the Mother Goose Suite, and the second half was the Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances, which I've heard the BSO do before. The program was a little on the short side since Bronfman was original going to play the Brahms 1st, but it was all worth hearing and well done. There aren't any more piano soloists with the BSO until January, so this was a good way to tide things over until then.

Our last full day in Barbados (which is already a distant memory) we had the choice of either hanging around the resort all day, or renting a car and crisscrossing the entire island. Beth preferred to do the car thing, so we got ourselves lined up with a mini Moke, a car with no doors and no roof (one rental companies web site says of it, "not suitable for small children", delivered right to the hotel. Had to pay cash for a temporary Barbados drivers license, and the rental for one day was over $60 US, including LDW (which seemed like a good idea) but didn't cover any damage to the tires, which fortunately were indestructable.



I drove for a little while until it proved that Beth couldn't read the map to save her life, so we stopped for gas and then switched places. Me navigating and her driving meant we'd get where we were going sooner, but not necessarily in one piece. We got on the one highway on the island, prosaically called the ABC Highway, and headed to Bridgetown to find the Pelican Craft Center, which we did without too much trouble. This was on the western edge of town, away from the old part of the city but close to where the cruise ships dock, and there are about 20 duty free stores selling various types of crafts, clothing, etc. The place was deserted (no cruise ships) and a few stores were closed, but we poked around for awhile and found a nice batik print by a local artist to bring home as a souvenir you could hang on the wall.



While we were inside it rained a bit, but it had stopped by the time we were ready to go. Beth wanted to find the post office, as Chloe had some class project where she was supposed to send a drawing of herself to someone in a foreign country and they were supposed to write a letter and fill up an envelope with local stuff and send it back. Rather than prevail upon her friend Lexi in Japan, she had us take it along on our trip, and Beth had everything packaged up and ready to mail, but needed a post office since it was a large envelope. We saw the post office, but there was nowhere to park (we probably could've walked there from the Craft Center, but didn't know that until it was too late), and driving around the block was a challenge with all the one way streets, so we decided to look for one somewhere else.



We headed up the western side of the island, which we'd only seen from the catamaran the day before, where all the posh resorts and golf courses are (Tiger Woods just got married at one yesterday), with our first stop in Holetown. Holetown isn't really a town, just a collection of shops, but given the clientele they're more like what you'd expect in the U.S., even a little mall with several tourist-oriented stores and a big grocery store. I got me a t-shirt and Beth found some things to bring back for Julie, plus some beanies for the kids. While we were in the shops it rained rather heavily, and while inside the last place we went, the power went out. They said that happens occasionally this time of year whenever there's lightning. But it cleared up reasonably quickly, although the car got a little wet inside (no doors, remember, and just a ragtop for a roof, which deposited some accumulated rain into the car as soon as we started moving).



By now it was lunchtime and we were starving, so we backtracked south a quarter mile or so to the local Chefettes, a fast food chain that we figured we had to hit at least once (no McDonalds on Barbados has ever succeeded, although there are several KFC's). Chefettes has the standard burgers, chicken, fries and so forth, we opted for the roti, which seems like more of an Indian-style wrapped sandwich with chicken and potatoes, and a salad. This particular Chefettes is the only one with an ocean-front dining area, some covered picnic tables outside along the beach across the parking lot, so we ate out there, as by now the sun was out and everything was drying off.



The next stop up the western coast was Speightstown (pronounced "Spikestown", even though there's no "k" in the name), a real town with a very narrow old-looking main street with a number of local shops for local people (as they say on "League of Gentlemen"). We asked around and found the Speightstown post office and just like an American post office there were tons of people in line and only one person working. After waiting 15 minutes or so, Beth had the lady put on as many different stamps as she had to add up to the requisite amount, and "Flat Chloe" was off to the U.S. (arriving exactly one week later).



There didn't appear to be any tourists at all in Speightstown, and not much for them to do if they had been. I was worried I'd run low on cash, so I tried ATM's at three different banks and all three of them weren't working (as it turned out I had enough after all). We walked along a beach that fronted some luxury condos (although the beach was empty and needed some trash removal), then walked back towards the car along the main street and stopped for ice cream. So it wasn't a place you'd base your vacation around, but it was the only other real town we saw besides the relatively "big city" of Bridgetown.



Driving along the coast it was hard to get lost, and the guide books all promise that if you drive, eventually you'll get lost, so the only thing to do was turn inland and head for the east coast. We found our way right to the Farley Hill National Park, just across the street from the Wildlife Preserve we'd been to on the Saturday tour. The park isn't large but it encompasses a large hill with plenty of trees and a gazebo at the top where you can look out over the eastern coast. Also on the grounds is the ruin of a 1930's plantation house that was gutted by fire and all that is left is the stone walls and foundations, and it has been in that state for so long that tons of vegetation is growing in it, including along the tops of the walls themselves. It's sort of typical of Barbados that one of it's primary attractions, and one that is the centerpiece of an area they felt worth preserving, is a bombed-out building, but while it's not Stonehenge there is a certain visual presence in its disintegrating edifices.



Back in the car, the little mini Moke wheezed its way up one side of the mountain and down the other to the "rugged eastern shore" (as all the guide books call it), which we had seen on the tour but hadn't gotten to walk around. Walked along the beach there, north of Bathsheba, for quite a while, Beth doing what she does on any beach anywhere and picking up lots of crap disgorged by the ocean to bring home.



By the time we were ready to leave there the sun was going down and it was time to head back to home base. We discovered as we drove west in the late afternoon that not only did the car have no doors, it had no sun visors either, so Beth did a lot of squinting and hoping for the best until we were headed south again, getting caught up in rush hour traffic as everyone headed away from Bridgetown. The sun was setting and we weren't on the beach, so we hightailed it to the hotel and got there to see the tail end of the sunset one last time, and by now there was a full moon in the other direction.



Pretty well pooped and covered in sand, we washed up and decided to bring all our dining documentation with us to the bar poolside for a drink and figure out where to go for dinner. We still had the car, after all, so we could drive to any restaurant we chose. But after sitting there for awhile, we decided we'd just as soon stay put, so we had dinner at the hotel restaurant adjacent to the bar, which didn't seem to be a real restaurant and had just a few specials on the menu, but it was fine for our purposes and the food was good.



Back in the room, we packed up our stuff as we had to get up bright and early for the cab that was coming at 5:15 am for our 7:30 flight. I don't know why they insisted on coming that early, since we were at the airport by 6:00 and checked in and at the terminal within 20 minutes. It gave me the opportunity to stand in line to cash in my leftover Barbados paper money, but otherwise there wasn't much to do at the airport. We got a big plane this time and stopped over in Miami, where we had a couple of hours to kill after going through immigration and customs, but it was just as well as the connecting gate was like a mile away. Beth was prepared this time for the metal detectors, so no problems there. It rained much of the time we were on the ground in Miami, so we didn't bother to go outside, and the flight to Boston was a little late leaving, but we were still back in Logan by 5:30 and home by 7:30 or so. The kids were relieved to see us (we picked them up at the school as Julie had Myra's kids too and had taken them all to a Cub Scout meeting), we grabbed a pizza to bring home, and that was all she wrote.



If we were to go back to the Caribbean I think I'd try a different island just to have something to contrast with Barbados, nothing too rustic, but not too touristy either. But our next island trip is already in the planning stages, as we're heading to the UK next August for the Worldcon in Glasgow. I know that doesn't really count, but we'll make do.

Fall is in the air up here in the arctic circle, but last weekend we were still in sunny, hot and humid Barbados. Sunday we took our time getting ready in the morning for the shuttle bus that was coming to pick us up at 9:00 to take us to Bridgetown for the snorkeling trip. For once, the shuttle bus was late, but there was another couple, more newlyweds, these named Chris and Amelie and from New Jersey, waiting with us. The bus finally arrived, picked up people at about four other hotels and still made it to the dock by the proscribed departure time of 10am.



I guess since there's not much of a harbor in Barbados, sailing isn't one of the major activities there like it is in the Bahamas or Virgin Islands (plus the nearest islands are relatively far away by sailboat standards). So a lot of the boats you see tend to be catamarans, which was the case with our snorkeling cruise. Although it supposedly held 100 people, there were about 60 on the trip, comprised of one 10-year old and the rest couples of all ages, including some extremely tan old English people. Gloriel had recommended this Tiana outfit over the Cool Runnings we'd had recommended because it was a bigger boat and thereby had a bigger enclosed area to get out of the sun when you weren't in the water (staying out of the sun is another popular Barbados pasttime, almost an obsession for some).



As it turned out, we didn't need to stay out of the sun so much as out of the rain. The weather was fine as we motored way up the western coast to get to a spot where we could see some sea turtles (I saw two in the first 30 seconds in the water and that was it). But on the way back it started raining, really coming down at some points. Some people were almost chilly and found it refreshing after sweating through the rest of their vacation up to then. They served lunch on the boat (more flying fish, but lots of other good stuff) and people took advantage of the rain to just have an excuse to drink more. For the long trip back down the coast it was more of a party cruise than a snorkeling cruise, and nobody seemed to mind much. As it was, and we ended up going even further south to an alternate site since the current was too strong at the primary spot.



By the time we got to the second dive spot the sun had come out again and we were over a shipwreck that was sunk years ago to create an artificial reef. The water was clearer here and about 20 feet deep, there were plenty of fish up near the surface although there wasn't much variety. Down in the wreck you could see more fish, but with snorkeling gear it's hard to get much below the surface for any length of time. This outfit made everyone wear lifejackets, although inflating them was optional. This helps you to focus on snorkeling rather than not drowning. They didn't provide fins though, saying they scared off the turtles, but the turtles were plenty scared off to begin with, and the second site didn't have any turtles, so I'm not sure what the point was. Beth got to snorkel for the first time and did pretty well and seemed to enjoy herself. For me, it wasn't as good as Molokini, but it was a fun trip.



The shuttle bus dispatched us back to our respective hotels by 4:30 or so, so it was back to the pool to rinse off, although I skipped the rum punch since I'd already had several during the cruise, and another sunset, which started out promising but then was mostly obscured by clouds, equalling the "hideous sunset" that the waiter in Maui apologized for at Scott & Shelley's rehearsal dinner. The aforementioned newlywed Chris ended up on the beach at the same time as we did so we chatted with him some more, he seemed like a real surfer dude even though he was from New Jersey and he and his new bride were both smokers. He had recommneded this restaurant called Pisces just down the road in St. Lawrence Gap, which was also written up in Frommers, so we took a cab over there (just Beth and me, that is, not the surfer dude) and had a nice dinner by the water, then just walked back, the only time we walked that stretch at night. There were quite a few people out and about and the area looks much better in the evening, without so many people standing around trying to sell you timeshares or souvenirs.



There was only one full day to go and still plenty of places we hadn't seen, so we made arrangements with the activities desk to rent a car on Monday, which I'll elaborate on next time.

I posted some pictures of the trip here, but this time it's just a link to Shutterfly, which I'm trying out as an alternate means of hosting the actual pictures. You put the originals up there, and then anyone who wants them can order their own copies (saving the lag time in getting me to do it). It takes about a minute for me to upload each picture (DSL uploads being considerably slower than downloads), and there were about 170 for this batch, but I'll see how it works. The pictures themselves will help you follow along with this travelog.



So where were we? Saturday we actually had to get up at a decent hour because the tour van was coming at 8:30 or so. When it arrived, there was only one other couple inside, and we recognized each other from the plane ride from San Juan Thursday night. The other couple, Brad and Suzanne, were newlyweds, actually from the Boston area, who had spent a few days in Puerto Rico before coming to Barbados and were staying at the Crane Beach hotel, which is at the southeastern corner of the island, sort of remote from the civilization, but a suitably romantic spot except for the lack of air conditioning.



The tour bus was operated by "Glory Tours", and had emblazoned on their back bumper, "With God all things are possible". What that mantra has to do with operating a tour bus I'm not sure, but I suppose there were a couple of particular steep hills we went up where maybe a little divine intervention was all that was keeping us moving forward. This tour was focused on the "natural wonders" of the island, as opposed to hitting the rum distillery and the plantations and such.



One added feature of the tour this particular day was that it was taking place during the cricket final between England and the West Indies. The cab driver from the airport Thursday night had warned us about the big championship match coming up, and literally everyone in Barbados was cheering on the West Indies team. The final was actually in England, and had started about an hour before the tour, so I'd gotten to see some of it on the tv in the room before we left, and every time we stopped somewhere, at the gift shop or the restaurant there was another tv and everyone was watching the match.



The tour was supposed to begin at Harrison's Cave, but the tour guide (whose name I don't remember) got a call as we were enroute and had to make an adjustment to the schedule because, he said, "the retards can't get the gate open". So instead we went to Orchid World first. This is fairly new place and contains more orchids than you can believe exist, no two kinds of which look remotely alike. I kept thinking of the movie "Adaptation", and since some of these flowers grow in odd circumstances (many of them were growing suspended in midair because they normally grow in the tops of trees in the rain forest) you'd have to believe this was a world-class collection of orchids, although I haven't been to any other Orchid Worlds anywhere else so that's just speculation. There was a fairly large gift shop there, and the tv was playing the cricket match instead of the orchid video that was for sale.



After that it was on to St. John's Church, an old Catholic church near the east coast, set up on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Spent some time wandering around the grounds there. One young guy approached us wanting to know if Glory Tours was a Christian organization, as apparently he was there as part of some Christian ministry or other. From the church we headed for the coast (which the guide books always refer to as the "rugged eastern coast") and the town of Bathsheba (so named because the surf makes the water look like milk). The beach there is great, although not swimmable, but there was a surfing competition going on in one area, and we stopped a couple of places for pictures. Beth had asked the guide about these seagrapes we'd seen for sale in Bridgetown, which apparently grow only along the coast, so when he spotted some he pulled over and shook a few off the trees for us. They sort of look like grapes, but have a large pit inside and a bitter rather than sweet flavor. Not something you'd want a whole handful of, but interesting.



By then it was time for lunch, so we stopped at the Sand Dune Bar and Grill and were basically the only customers (being in a relatively remote location, or the offseason, or the day of the cricket final, or some combination thereof). Had some flying fish with macaroni pie and rice, while a few of the locals and the tour guide watched some more of the match (the West Indies were up to bat at this point) which by now had been going on for five hours. Flying fish is typically served fried, but it's filleted so it just looks like any other fried fish, although it's not as flaky as scrod or as steaky as swordfish.



Back in the van, it was on to the Wildlife Preserve, with the promise of getting a glimpse of the elusive green monkeys, but no such luck. If the schedule had been adhered to, we would've arrived here last, and been around for their scheduled feeding, which usually brings them out of the woodwork. As it was we wandered around one heavily forested area for a while, where the lack of signage denoting the way out really put you at a disadvantage, even with a map. The main part of the refuge was more conventionally laid out, and had quite a few turtles, reptiles, these odd half-rabbit/half-dingo things, some small deer, tropical birds, and even an 8-foot python (which was, unlike the rest, behind glass), While we were there, the guide watched the match some more from the bar (even the drink stands at these places all serve rum) with the employees. A storm was brewing up to the north and there was the occasional rumble of thunder, but it never made it to where we were.



The last stop was the much-delayed Harrison's Cave, which the staff had finally managed to get into. Our timing was impeccable since as we came into the lobby the West Indies were on their 8th player and were within a few runs of winning, so we stood around with them watching the match this time, and sure enough they won, and there was much rejoicing. It was neat to see how in to it everyone was, and how as you went from place to place they were all linked by this shared interest in the match. On the way back to the hotel we saw two or three cricket matches going on, so the place really is cricket-crazy. We asked the tour guide to explain it to us, and he filled in a few gaps besides what I'd been able to piece together from watching myself, but the bottom line is it really is as complicated as it seems.



Harrison's Cave is also a relatively recent attraction, the cave had been known about for years but wasn't really explored until the '70's. In true Barbados fashion, the government bulldozed a path through the cave big enough for a long wheeled train to drive through, so unlike most American caves you don't have to walk. It's not a large cave, although there are several individual formations and more yet to be opened, but it was fine.



We got back to the hotel around 3:30 or 4 and had time to go for a swim, hang out by the pool and have a couple of drinks, then head for the beach again to watch the sunset. For dinner we decided to get a cab and go to this Greek place called "Opa" that was towards Bridgetown and too far to walk. Getting the cab from the hotel was easy, you just ask the bell captain and he calls the guard station and there's a couple of them hanging around in an empty lot down the street waiting for the call. The restaurant was ok, not great, not cheap either, and unlike the Italian place the night before, no one working there looked Greek. We stepped in next door to get some gelato for dessert, then asked the hostess at the restaurant to get us a cab back, but after waiting for several minutes it hadn't arrived. So Beth suggested we just start walking and look for one. Sure enough, after about thirty seconds, a van toots at us and we pile in. What we were on was not so much a cab as a private bus, and this being Saturday night it was completely full of locals, and we were off on what felt like the scene from Life of Brian where Brian is on the run and ends up on a spaceship flying through the city at breakneck speed. Periodically someone would press what was essentially a door buzzer, the van would pull over and he would get out. As we were going down the road, if the driver saw people walking he would beep at them to see if they wanted a ride. It wasn't scary or anything, it all was happening so fast you didn't have time to feel like a fish out of water (being the only white people on board, and Beth the only female). I was worried we'd miss our stop, since there's not much to go by for landmarks, but the driver was looking out for us (someone else was getting out at what I recognized was where we wanted to get off, at the same time as the driver turned around and said "Hey, big guy, this is you"). From there it was only a couple of blocks back to the hotel, slightly dazed and bemused by the whole thing, but you couldn't beat the fact that it had appeared almost immediately and had cost a whopping 75 cents US each (where the cab ride there was about 10 times that).



Heads still spinning, as we approached the hotel an elderly British couple were also coming back from dinner and we struck up a conversation with them, and ended up chatting in the lobby with them for 20 minutes or so. They were also on their first trip to Barbados, but had travelled extensively in the US, and we traded stories about different places we'd been in America and the UK. They seemed to have the same enthusiasm for seeing the USA as we did in our trips to the British Isles, so it was kind of fun to hear their point of view. They'd seen much of the east coast and a lot of the west, so when the woman asked me what I'd recommend in the US, I suggested anything from Chicago down through St. Louis to Memphis and New Orleans.



The trip was already half over and we were just getting started.