Dean And My Depression

Its been a hell of a few days off, and when I measure my issues against those of people further south it doesn't as the saying goes, amount to a hill of beans. St Lucia and Martinique are recovering from Dean which was a Category Two at the time and bad enough. Jamaicans are talking on their talk radio as though the passage of the Category Three was no big thing. It seems the south coast got battered a bit but there are mountains there which protect the north coast. We drove the northern edges of the Maroon region of central Jamaica and I wish the people were as beautiful as their countryside.

The cane fields of Jamaica have a fabulous backdrop with those mountains but the people we found exuded an air of desperation and hopelessness. It was a brief impression but a very negative one. I can only wonder how they are doing with all this extra rain and wind.

Music is playing on Cayman Island Radio advising people on Grand Cayman the curfew is still in effect but not on Cayman Brac, so I guess, thanks to streaming I know things could have been worse. The south road in Grand Cayman is a slow winding drive with not a lot to see if you are familiar with flat, rocky tropical islands. We rented and drove when our cruise ship stopped there and the impression I got was of a dusty, small and culturally barren island about as large and as interesting as the Lower Keys lacking not only the ambiance of Key West but also the Highway to the mainland. Mexico is next and the Yucatan gets raked by a Category 5 Dean with winds over 140 knots (170 mph) sustained. Really, God doesn't much like Mexicans, I'm almost sure. Though what they have done to deserve this shit I have no idea. I always like visiting Mexico and on our trip by cruise ship we still managed to enjoy some roadside good eats on our rental car drive all round the island of Cancun.

Its been windy around here the past few days, and my wife insisted early on the windiness was a by-product of Dean's passing, and she was right. She remembered when we were anchored off Panama's Caribbean coast in 2000 and our sailboat was buffeted by strong winds produced by a major hurricane, Lenny, some 500 miles away. Today its like a winter storm front passing all bright and crisp through the Keys bringing 30 miles an hour of breeze and cool temperatures around the mid 80's. Very invigorating.

And just to keep us on our toes tropical wave 92 is buggering about in the Atlantic, 1200 miles from Melbourne Florida and quite likely to become a depression and then a tropical storm and god knows what by the time it may possibly threaten the eastern US coast. What a depression.

I should be depressed- my Vespa still doesn't work properly and I'm facing a third trip up to Miami. This time they will take it and keep it till it runs smoothly at all rpm's and doesn't stall whenever it feels like it. Once they have it running I don't know what I'll do but this Vespa has to go. Reliability is what I crave. We both, my wife and I, as always talk a lot when we have to make a decision, and we are talking more about motorcycles and scooters than I'd care to frankly. I'd rather be riding.

Meanwhile another depression is forming in the Atlantic east of the Bahamas which should put it too far north to whack the Keys by the time it gets to the US east coast, but now the speculation is whether this will become an organized depression (its currently a messy wave), or even a storm and who will it whack. Your choice from Miami to Charleston.

These rumblings lead one to expect a busy hurricane season.