Oh Lucky Man!

It looks like Paradise Lost: I could have lived among these rolling hills these past 25 years, but I chose America instead. I never wanted to confront the outcome of my choice until this past summer when I went home to Italy for the first time.
They write novels about what happens when prodigal sons go back to the place of their birth a generation or two later. These books are popular in North American literature, land of migrants and displaced people par excellence. Americans want to recreate their roots and imagine a better, more comfortable life in a world left behind. Those that know me are polite but incredulous when they discover I come from Umbria the land of hill towns, castles and a panoply of saints. There were no saints in my family, but there is a castle.

I left Italy for the last time in the Spring of 1982, I rode away one night on my motorcycle never to return, and arrived in California in the Fall of that same year after ditching the Yamaha for an airline ticket. I returned to Umbria in the summer of 2007 and found myself in a world that looked very similar even after the passage of 25 years, but was subtly different in more ways than I expected, not least because of massive alterations in my perspective. The first thing I had to get used to was seeing many faces I remembered as living people, now posted as photos in the cemetery next to my mother's own grave. My sister is an old woman now and her husband of 40 years is almost as old as his father was when I lived here. I am no longer the impetuous stranger my sister says she remembers. I am the American.

On the surface my sister and her husband were delighted to see me back in the village whence I had fled a quarter century ago. I rode out of town because life had become too painful, I was into adulthood just seven years and my future looked bleak and featureless, an unravelling of the decades in the same place doing the same thing, over and over again. We lived on the land and the cycles are unchanging, ploughing, sowing , reaping as the seasons turn. They made a movie about this syndrome called Groundhog Day, wherein the main character relives the same day over and over again without explanation. My sisters, twins and ten years older than me, relished the prospect and they grasped the rural life with a hunger that was frightening to watch. They stomped any obstacles to their desires and I was clearly not acceptable because I was miserable as the anointed figurehead, the only male in a family wedded to the land whose demands on me I loathed. Farming was not my mistress- little wonder I took to living on sailboats in California!

Such an unpromising start gave my life an urgency that can be off putting to those around me who fondly pretend that life is an endless circus.

Its not, and watching my mother make a painful transition out of this world when she was just 49, and not ready to go, has always been at the back of my mind when someone blithely says: "Oh, there's plenty of time."

In those same novels I mentioned earlier the young migrant lands on the shores of the New World filled with hope and a determination to succeed, and thus far my life agreed with the script. Where it all went very different than the script was in my definition of success. For me that came not in money accumulated in the bank, but in memories accumulated in my mind, the place that was always mine, not susceptible to moth nor rust, and eminently portable. I needed to create memories, to live more than one life within the span of however few years I had. And to be able to keep those memories wherever I ended up. A true Nomad.

On my own terms I was successful, however a Buddhist watching my progress would have had a serious case of the head shakes. This constant need to plan change, to prepare for something different, to quit and move on was the very opposite of the notion of mindfulness. My requirement was to live in the future, failing completely to appreciate the moment. I have suffered most of my life from a total incapacity to appreciate the moment, and this has forced me always to plan and project the future on the screen of my mind.

As an exercise in Buddhist serenity my life has been a failure but I have found that my frenzied formula has worked for me, inasmuch as I am learning, late in life, to settle down, to be mindful, to cherish the moment. I liken my situation to that of the fictional immigrant of literature who has accumulated a fortune and now wants to spend it buying the life he passed by on his way to racking up his financial security. I have stored up all the different phases of my life in America and this past summer was the time when i had to go to the bank and start withdrawing them to pay them down against the memories of my youth in the countryside on the banks of the Tiber River, that same river mentioned in the histories of Rome, upon whose banks Western Civilization built many of its foundations. To me, as a child, it was a muddy place to splash away the oppressive heat of summer.

There has been method to my madness because at a time when many men are going off the rails in a "mid life crisis" so called, my mid life crisis is the impelling desire to settle down in my job, not flee from it. I ride a motorcycle not because I want to appear younger or sexier or more attractive but because in a world where personal travel is a constant requirement, moving on two wheels keeps the mindfulness at maximum pitch, which is a pleasure as opposed to the dreariness of droning along in a line in a car.

Lots of motorcycle riders hold safety as the prime concern when they ride; for me mindfulness is what counts. Enjoying the moment is critical and part of the enjoyment comes from paying attention to my fellow travelers as they pass by, using their time in their cars to read phone eat talk doze or dream. Anything but focusing on the moment. Mindfulness keeps me aware that tomorrow a wreck may end or cripple the life I never take for granted. I felt that most clearly recently when I was stuck in a commercial airliner! I was riding into Fort Lauderdale airport and the plane suddenly opened up its engines and clawed back into the sky for a second attempt at the runway. Death seemed real close right then and, paradoxically, a long way from my motorcycle!

The home I grew up in, a home that was in reality a twelfth century castle, was a place I couldn't wait to escape from. Romantic for sure, but uncomfortable and unnecessarily huge, which in a world of suburban conformity makes me sound churlish and narrow. I among millions of dreamers have actually lived in a castle and have made the trade to a 700 square foot stilt house on a canal in the Keys. Palazzo Paparini in all its faded glory, no longer mine to worry about:50 rooms, seven bedrooms in my apartment alone, and only three of those spaces centrally heated. Water flooding the basement, an electrical system as medieval as the 12th century walls all covered by a leaky roof the size of three tennis courts. Not to mention a basement area huge enough to store grain for a ten year siege and wine barrels large enough to live in:That this beneficence was not enough for me caused massive ructions in and around my family, and my desire to live a fresh life made me feel ashamed. The arguments, the insults and the scorn are ignored in polite conversation now in the village, but they burned a scar on my soul. I am old enough to keep the scar covered in polite society now, and that made my return possible.

To be a prodigal from Umbria is to be cast out from one of the newly hip places on the planet, to be a refugee from Eden, to be a Displaced Person, with a cardboard suitcase and a name tag tied to one's collar. That DP is a displaced person to be pitied by fellow travelers who get to see Umbria through the rose tinted lenses of a wide eyed tourist. The story is that Adam and Eve suffered torment after their expulsion, my story is one of expulsion that led to great good fortune that could never have been replicated living alongside my sisters. Even if that life were lived in a castle.

There is a widely held belief that la dolce vita exists on the sidewalks of Italian cities, a languid lifestyle of slow food, friendship and endless witty conversations helped along by manic hand gestures. Not so. I remember vividly when my childhood buddy who grew up alongside me came to California and witnessed all the folks reading and swallowing pastries in a local coffee shop mid morning on a weekday, and he groaned in envy. " I wish I had time to live like this," he said. He doesn't even see it as a possibility for him when he retires as the Italian state pension system is running out of money and retirement age keeps getting pushed back... not very dolce at all. My sisters on the other hand, live day to day with no definition, no goals, and no sense of time, and they have learned to vegetate successfully, noblesse oblige, I suppose. My life would have driven them mad years ago, as theirs did me, and so one cannot say that life is better or worse one way or the other. But I do know this: I should have withered years ago had I remained down on the farm, and my dread-filled visit home after a quarter century absence confirmed in me the validity of my choice. I have no doubt they would not have wanted their life any other way. It was Morruzze all the way.And that is true fortune, to have confirmed by Time, the aptitude of one's youthful vision. Filmmaker Federico Fellini died wishing more people shared his vision, he wanted his weird and complex dreams to be as popular in his words as Steven Spielberg's simplistic, cheerful fairy tales. I know that is impossible because I have lived a portion of both visions and I know which one is more completely livable. I escaped from Amarcord and cracked a whip like Indiana Jones, and have had tremendous fun exploring the souks of my mind along the way.

I am a Lucky Man.

Comida Cubana

For decent Cuban food, in Key West at least, you need real Cuban bread, which looks and tastes like floppy supermarket "French bread." French bread in France is crisp and hard on the outside and heavily aerated with a rough texture inside. In the US of A, French bread is a long pale loaf with a soft spongy interior. I'm not going to elaborate on what kind of a baking blasphemy produces an "English" muffin.

A three-dollar Cuban breakfast, cafe con leche with pan con queso at Five Brothers Deli on Ramrod Key, a staple Keys breakfast easily replicated at any of a number of Cuban delis in Key West- Seven Days, Kims Kuban, Little Jon's, Five Brothers ( the original store), Jeanas Courthouse, and on and on. A con leche with as many sugars as your teeth can stand along with a slice of Cuban bread filled with American cheese (Swiss if you're a wuss), toasted, and you're good till lunch. A con leche is just an abbreviated cafe con leche and is nothing more complicated than a cafe latte, as sold in Starbucks for three times the price.

A "Cuban mix" is Cuban bread with layers of cheese, roast pork, ham and pickles wedged between mustard and mayo and then squashed in a sandwich press which makes the whole thing flat, smooth and warm. You order thusly:" A Cuban mix, all the way, and a con leche with one." All the way gets you all the ingredients on offer including a smear of mayo and mustard. On the sandwich that is; "with one" gets you the appropriate number of sugars. If you're a Conch you need at least 5, possibly 8 in your con leche.

For dinner expect pork or pork, roast or fried (!) possibly shredded (ropa vieja), ground beef with olives (picadillo), or you could deviate from the favorite Cuban meat and go with flank steak served with a ton of lightly grilled onions on top. There are of course your wussy alternatives: grilled chicken or fish for those that can't digest fried pork chunks washed down with sangria and heavily buttered chunks of Cuban bread. Accompaniment is always rice and beans, separate or mixed (moros y cristianos), and as I'm not overly fond of black beans all the time, I try to see if I can get red beans, garbanzo beans, white (navy) beans or Lima beans depending on where I am eating out. This is not your average nouvelle cuisine large plate- tiny portions fare offered up in suburban American. Eating Cuban is a robust rough and tumble, napkins at the neck and stout cutlery to fight back the waves of food.

A word about plantains. These are NOT bananas even though they look like them, and conchs like to call them bananas to confuse lily white Northerners. They are a (relatively) sugar-free starch and taste foul uncooked. Plantains can come hard fried and served sprinkled with salt (tostones), which, along with some ketchup make an excellent appetizer, or soft fried in oil and they end up looking slimy and brown and are utterly delicious, like sweetened, sticky bananas.

In my opinion a side of these things do away with the need for a dessert but if you figure how much sugar your average Cuban consumes you'll understand why you can always have flan, a cream caramel indistinguishable from the Mexican variety. Better is the natilla, a soft vanilla flavored pudding often sprinkled with a little ground cinnamon. Sometimes, if my wife isn't looking I can order a tres leches, three milk pudding layered and sticky and a heavenly reminder of imprisonment in English boarding school. Then they pour you into a wheelbarrow and roll you home, stuffed like a fois gras goose.

Do not make the mistake of assuming Cuban food (as served in the Keys and Miami- God knows what they eat on the island itself, fresh air sandwiches if the propaganda is to be believed) is anything other than a minor variant on general Caribbean rice-meat-beans, cooking. It is not Mexican, in that its not sauced or spicy. It has tons of variants with adherents to each variation, and other cultures get mixed in like this orange colored ("Spanish" style) rice made with tomato sauce at Coco's Cantina on Cudjoe Key when the daily special was $9 beef stew.

Notice the bowl of black beans, quite delicious actually, stewed with onions and served with a spoon. A Cuban or a Conch would make a hole in the rice and spoon in the beans to make their own "Christians and Moors" mixture of black and white. I just used the spoon supplied in place of the fork. The stew was so tender it didn't need a knife. And in the end you need a decent motorcycle, any motorized two wheeler, not necessarily a Triumph Bonneville, to get there, lacking a wheelbarrow to get you home.

Vespa vs Bonneville

"This is a jewel," my buddy said to me, after we stopped to stretch our legs on the way in to Key West. We swapped machines and he took off on the Bonneville this time and I plunked myself down on the GTS. Then, a dozen miles further down the road we stopped alongside the Key West "International" Airport, and took in the sea and the sun and the motorcycles we had just parked. "Ah yes," he said. "The Bonneville, what a machine..."

I am in limbo just now, holding both the outgoing GTS and the incoming Bonneville and I wonder how to value each or either. In a more ideal world, perhaps a world of air conditioned garages and time and space to ride more than one machine at a time one could consider keeping both, but in my life, in my time/space continuum there is room for one just one machine. Besides the wife insists. We have bills to pay, bills I'd rather ignore.

The Vespa, there is no doubt, has come a long way over the past 60 years. The GTS is frequently described as half a motorcycle, thanks to its top speed, near 80 mph, and its ability to accelerate there relatively fast, fast enough to force car drivers to have to try very very hard if they want to get ahead. It costs as much as a motorcycle, $6200 out the door in Miami. It carries lots of rational luggage spaces, in front, in the middle and in the back, it holds the road well, it accelerates smoothly and it looks a million dollars.

The seating is as comfortable as anything on two wheels and the ample floorboards not only offer excellent weather protection to the feet and legs, but they also allow the rider to move around and assume different stances to relieve any physical strain from sitting in one position.

The shortcomings of the Vespa as a distance rider are mostly in the mind, and in a town where scooters are popular and small, like Key West, it is, paradoxically, inconceivable that a man could use a motor scooter as a daily rider on the Highway. It gets tedious justifying an 80mph/70mpg Vespa as something more than "just an urban scooter." A 250cc Vespa GTS is neither fish nor fowl, it is a scooter but it rides like a motorcycle. Its easy to ride but presents itself as a machine for neophytes, for people who have never challenged themselves with a motorcycling stick shift; the Vespa is for people who do not dare to ride the "real thing." I remember an entry in the Scooter in the Sticks blog discussing a television icon on a motorcycle who renders visual the notion of motorcycling freedom by taking to the beach (Ocean Beach in San Francisco I rather think) and riding his grossly uncomfortable chopper with ape hangars in his hands and a wool watch cap on his head. The question posed was, roughly, can one aspire to be all that the television program implied, if one rides a Vespa? It's a good question, but the fact that it is posed, and unanswerable, leaves the Vespa in limbo.

The Triumph Bonneville is the 1960s icon of macho everything, it leaves no question unanswered if you want to wear a watch cap (in a no-helmet-law state like Florida) and be a real man. However the New Bonneville gets its grunt from an extra 200cc's on the original 650 (the original original frightened the pants off wannabe motorcyclists with just 500cc's) and it behaves impeccably from the time it starts to the time it sits cooling and ticking under the house after the ride.The Bonnie is a powerful motorcycle also capable of lumping along much more slowly without hesitation or hiccough, and with modest saddlebags and a modest top case it runs to and from work with the greatest of ease. In a nod to its heritage it uses a manual fuel tap and a manual choke (fuel injection is on the horizon) and in standard form it is not much louder than the Vespa. Chain maintenance is easier than I expected with my funny little Loobman bottle and so far the tubed tires haven't had a flat so I can't bitch about how hard a roadside temporary repair is on these "old fashioned" tubes. I wish it came with a tachometer but will be a later, $400, addition. For $7700 out the door its a nice all round motorcycle. Where it wins out over the Vespa, in my opinion is in the reduced overall maintenance schedule. The vespa needs its drive belt changed every 6,000 miles and the rear tire every 4,000 if you're lucky and it lasts that long. For someone who rides a thousand or more miles a month "Vespanomics" doesn't compute.

In the image department it is everything a rider from the 1970s could wish for. I love the rear suspension, two separate springs bolted to an obvious frame- a look that has gone out of style on modern machines. I look at the big round headlight, all 7 inches of it, and it makes me feel like I have gone back to the glories of years past. The fuel tank is rounded too as a fuel tank should be, and sits astride a "proper" frame, the carburettors sit modestly behind the air cooled engine fins doing their jobs without pumps or chips or electrons. It gives me the best of modern motorcycling function along with the visual cues that remind me where I have come from in terms of motorcycling. It satisfies. All this and it holds the road just fine, not like a modern race bike but in every way that counts for a street rider. Its a bonus for me that no one questions my choice of wheels when I putt up behind a sleepy cager led by that big headlamp on top of those huge wheels and powered by that ugly black lump of metal that clearly takes no prisoners. No explanation, no justification is needed as I slide on by, epitomizing the freedom of the open road. This is what the Intrepid Commuter on his blog calls a shifter, as opposed to a scooter. In my case it shifts traffic right out of the way.

And a lot of the pleasure of the Bonnie is image of course. A younger version of myself would ride the Street Triple by Triumph, 675ccs "only" but producing 109 horsepower to the Bonneville's 66hp (or the Vespa's 22hp). If I were 20 right now that's what I would ride. If form follows function this has to be a most superbly functional machine and it has a style that allows one to see past the ugly headlamps and the exposed "plumber's nightmare" of engine piping (more famously said of Vincents of yore) . Its purposeful, if you like an agrressive angular look. Obviously I don't.

Or if I were a long distance traveler I might have spent twice the money and bought a 1050cc Triumph Sprint with factory supplied hard travel bags.But I don't need the horsepower, I don't need the crouch and I am not yet ready for the modern look. I like my modern classic, be it a scooter or a shifter.

I have the Bonnie, and though I shall eventually miss the Vespa when its sold, I ride a motorcycle that not only fills the visual cues a middle aged man looks for in his ride, it justifies his self image as an accomplished rider, and demands enough competence to make it an object of justifiable pride.

"You know," my childhood friend said as he lit up a cigarette on the side of the road. "This thing rides just as easily as a scooter." "Thats right" I replied, remembering once again how he and I grew up together, riding together. Nowadays he rides a massive BMW 1200 that easily hauls him and his wife up the autostrada.

"This is the best of all worlds," he said, admiring the Bonneville. Who am I to disagree?

Driving The Speed Limit

So, the question for me is whether Puerto Ricans, taken as a whole, are imbeciles or mathematical geniuses, and the line between madness and greatness is a fine one. Here's the thing: get into a rental car at the airport and the whole experience is pure US. The rental agent is spiffy in her uniform, even at 3:30 am, cheerful and efficient. The car looks like a US rental, steering wheel on the proper side, speedometer in miles per hour, and the vehicle comes dent and scratch free.

On the road, signage is all American, yellow center lines and white speed limit signs in miles per hour (millas por hora, I suppose), and then you notice the mile markers- in kilometers! What the hell? Distances are in metric? Then, eventually you go to fill up and it just gets worse. The first weird thing you'll notice is that the octane rating sticker is cross hatched with a blade to make it impossible to remove so the operator can't sell you regular for premium. Like any other state Puerto Rico's office of weights and measures certify that the pumps spew gas at the indicated rate, but the pumps are calibrated in liters- actually in litres. The average price for regular was about the same as the mainland, around 75 cents ( which at 4 litres to the US gallon equals a tad under $3.00).

I'm fussy about these kinds of things and my mind is reeling. I'm measuring speed in mph, distances in kilometers and measuring my gas in liters while cars are rated at mpg. Its a system of such mind boggling complexity one can only assume that Puerto Rican drivers are geniuses at mental arithmetic, all of them, or more likely they just don't much care. This alone would make me crazy were I to live on the island. A solid decade of prosperity has changed a lot of things on the island and driving habits are among them. There are malls, sprouting to service new housing developments and traffic signals everywhere to slow traffic to a crawl. Certainly the population has increased to about 4 million and the island is still only 100 miles long (160 kilometers I suppose) and half as wide making it the highest density neighborhood in the Caribbean. However Puerto Ricans seemed more friendly and relaxed than I remembered them. Perhaps it was the time of year, which was the end of hurricane season yet not quite crazy tourist time so people were less stressed.

Most chose not to run traffic lights and very few passed on the shoulder when we were driving the expressway (autopista). Most surprising of all was the way everyone obeyed the speed limit, which was ridiculously slow, 55 or 60 mph.Motorcyclists, almost all of whom rode Suzuki Hayabusas ("the fastest production motorcycle in the world"- possibly) helped to make me feel a little less lonely at the front of the pack of slow moving cars. I developed a theory that people drove slowly because they liked to make the island feel bigger. After all one could drive from Fajardo clear across to Mayaguez on more-or-less four lane expressways in three hours, easily. On a Hayabusa in two, and at either end there is nothing but open ocean.

This was also I am proud to announce one motoring trip where I never got pulled over. This summer I was nabbed in Croatia doing 74 in a 50 (kph) and only avoided a fine by the skin of my teeth. I also got pulled over for doing 50 in a 30 (mph) on Grand Cayman and got off with a warning. However my pride at not getting stopped is tempered somewhat by the odd nature of Puerto Rican policing which for reasons known only to themselves requires police cars to drive around in the hours of darkness with their blue lights flashing. This makes concealment difficult, to say the least. And the hordes of early morning drunk drivers take full advantage. That was exciting driving.

I loved the winding twisty roads, the sort of terrain one doesn't see anywhere in Florida, least of all the Keys, and the mountains of Puerto Rico deserve an entry of their own, their beauty is staggering, but for some reason Puerto Rico has more vegetation over their roads than any place else I've driven and it makes the most mundane road delightful.The towns we passed through on the secondary roads exuded a European air that gave the drive an exotic flavor. Churches faced on squares that centered the communities in defiance of the US habit of creating urban agglomerations that are centered on sprawl. The homes were modest for the most part, but I was surprised by the civic spirit that got the Christmas decorations in place so early in the "season" as it were. Yacubo at dawn on Saturday was cheerful with festive lights twinkling overhead.

Even in broad daylight the village of Palmer, the gateway to El Yunque, is a profusion of green, some of it out of control in this overly fertilized island.Motorcycling certainly looked appealing, despite the abundance of holes, countersunk manhole covers and sudden, poorly marked road works. The twists and turns, spectacular views and abundance of destinations made Puerto Rico look like Bonneville country to this Triumph rider. I did actually spot three Vespas (Puerto Rico Vespistas I have no doubt- I am a fan of their occasional website entries) among the multitude of Chinese scooters on the roads and I have been pondering the feasibility of a road trip to Puerto Rico on my own wheels even though Harleys are for rent in San Juan. Air freight to PR anyone? Not all Puerto Rican riders looked self assured though and I always cringe when I see scooter riders in Key West pulling this stunt: Hitting your foot on the ground as you roll along is an excellent way to walk with a limp for the rest of your life. At least he was complying with the new Puerto Rico motorcycling rules (since suspended temporarily) requiring all riders to wear protective clothing with additional dorky reflective vests at night. The Puerto Rican Legislature has now decided to hear from actual motorcycle riders about the best way to reduce roadway casualties. Education would be my bet.

Driving a car was fun but riding a motorcycle... I was almost glad to get home and prep the Bonneville to resume commuting.

Oil Coral and Sewage

San Francisco Bay is still smeared with more than 40,000 gallons of ships fuel that spilled from the China Overseas Shipping Corporation ship Busan, which hit a bridge piling and split open one of its fuel tanks. I listened on NPR to frantic volunteers trying to help clean up some of the 58,000 gallons that escaped the ship's side a few days ago, and one of the bright sparks suggested something needs to be done to prevent a re-occurrence.

The last such San Francisco Bay accident occurred in 1988, an incident I can't even recall to be honest, and considering the amount of ship's traffic in the Bay its amazing this doesn't happen more often. In the 21st century I find it weird that Chevron has a massive refining plant in urban Richmond, what was once wild East Bay boondocks. The potential for catastrophe is ever present, and the fact that ships aren't crashing all the time is a testament to human ingenuity.

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Just last week federal officials at Fort Jefferson National Park were trying to figure out how much damage a Bahamian freighter had done to the corals after it chose to anchor illegally in the National Park. It struck me as odd, because a century ago that was precisely the Dry Tortugas' purpose- a safe haven in heavy weather for passing ships. The Fort overlooks a deep basin of water, more than 50 feet deep surrounded by islets and reefs. Nowadays the idea is to allow natural growth to flourish in the old shipping haven, and anchoring is not allowed to wreck the coral growth. Interestingly the Park has also become a marine nursery, a place where fish species are allowed to grow and multiply allowing them to be reintroduced to waters where they have been fished to extinction. The federally funded Park 70 miles west of Key West is a national resource though not directly a commercial one.

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The recent report stating unequivocally that human sewage is killing the coral reef in the Keys has prompted more discussion about the federal mandate (unfunded so far) to have the Keys completely sewered by 2010. Everyone knows that's not going to happen on schedule, and switching homeowners from cesspits (that filter nothing in the limestone rock they are built in) to proper sewage treatment is going to cost about $10,000 per household, so thats another source of concern. The hope is that the feds will cough up some cash, but other perhaps more resilient locals argue that we don't deserve federal funds because its our shit, as they so eloquently put it. However it is everyone's reef, and I'd be as sorry to see it destroyed, as I am to see the beaches of San Francisco Bay getting covered in oil. I'm glad my federal dollars are helping with that clean up.

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One nation, all clean and tidy.

Enchanted Island

A weekend in Puerto Rico- que rico! It wasn't so flavorful the last time I was there, fully 14 years ago, a stop over on our honey moon (spent sailing the Grenadines- She has put up with a lot). Naturally because I don't do beach vacations we rented a car and I started driving the hell out of the little island as soon as we landed on Saturday at 4am, Atlantic Time at La Mercedita Airport at Ponce ( pro: Pon-say, not "ponse" as English speakers tend to; in British English that would be suggestive). It was pitch black and my wife and I were tired, not nearly as worn out as the third member of our little troop, a colleague half our age and twice as exhausted, who had never been outside the USA. I know Puerto Rico, la colonia, is part of the US, but it isn't in any cultural terms other than shopping and currency. It was a fine place to step outside oneself, even if only for a short weekend.

In the viewing tower in the Caribbean National Forest.

It was a hallucinogenic drive after arrivng so suddenly from the order and banality of urban South Florida to find ourselves darting through villages, under spreading canopies of imposing trees, dodging drunk drivers, getting lost in picturesque towns with Spanish Colonial plazas and helpful islanders who took pity and kept re-directing our Toyota full of gringos, Spanish speaking its true, but unable to decipher the multiplicity of vague roadsigns.

We found a hotel overlooking the Caribbean, facing east down a slope of green to a deep dark sea below, the island of Vieques on the horizon and we fell asleep Saturday morning. We awoke four hours later, to a world neither my wife nor I remembered, 15 years of prosperity have created a new more self confident, Free Associated State, with cleaner streets, better roads and happier people, it seemed. Our young colleague spent the 48 hours struggling to absorb a culture that she had never even come close to encountering, never having been further from Florida than the venerable state of Oklahoma, which though a fine place in many respects is poor preparation indeed for Puerto Rico, the enchanted island.

The whole weekend was a series of wild trips, El Yunque, San Juan the capital, seen at night, la Ruta Panoramica across the mountains and roast suckling pig eaten under the pines of the highlands, in Cayey, where else? A series of wild postcards, plopped into two very full days living, and a sudden undramatic flight back to Fort Lauderdale before dawn Monday morning with reinsertion into our daily, sub tropical lives. From 90 degrees to 70 degrees in two lofty hours. Here's Cabo Rojo at the southwestern tip of the Island at sunset, as mosquitoes descended in hordes to ravage us. Quick! A Medalla Light for him and a Rum Punch for her to revive their bloodless bodies! You don't see cliffs like these in the Florida Keys.

One excellent feature of my eccentric job is long alternating weekends, one of work followed by one of freedom. This trip was an experiment to see if two red eyes connected by unplanned travel might work. It did, and I have tons of stories and pictures for my diary. Que sabroso!