The Life Aquatic

I have written before of the word for people who don't own boats here ("stranded"). This is a water-borne culture. Everything revolves around the sea, and everyone owns and drives a boat. You have to! But since arriving, I have been beholden to others for transportation. Which is ironic, since I have a helicopter at my disposal. I mean, you'd think...

As beautiful as Guanaja is, it is not rife with places to land a helicopter. Most of the beaches are sloped, and helicopters can generally only handle a slope of ten degrees or so, which isn't much. Plus, landing on the beach is terribly hard on the bird. The downwash from the rotor whips up the sand and water, eroding my main and tail rotor blades and getting sucked into my engine. Not good. Even the elevated pad at our home cay is not quite high enough to avoid kicking up a sea- and sandstorm when I land. There are a couple of docks, soccer fields and the odd small field that I can use, but it's not like I can zip around like some bumblebee from flower to flower when I want to go shopping or visiting.

There are no landing spots down on the Cay, our equivalent of "downtown," so doing any business there requires a boat ride. Mostly I've been using the Boss's boat when he's not here. But that's not a good situation. It sucks down way too much gas for me to be piddling around with it. It's the boating equivalent of taking the SUV down to the corner for the newspaper.

The Boss's Speedboat

I've been looking for something to call my own. Now, if you put the word out here that you are looking for a boat, you will be swamped with offers. Everybody either has an incredibly overpriced boat for sale, or knows someone who does. I made a lot of "test drives," but couldn't decide. For one thing, I wasn't sure what I wanted. I only knew that I did not want a rear-drive outboard, period. Man, I do not like driving those. Cabin-cruiser? Might not be a bad idea, but there's always that gas-consumption thing. Big boat? Little boat? Decisions, decisions.

The head of our power company here owns a small 6-seat runabout with a HUGE engine. He doesn't pull away from the dock; he blasts-off! like an F-15 getting catapaulted off the U.S.S Iowa. I see him going by our cay sometimes. It looks bizarre, like something out of a cartoon. The entire boat is out of the water except for the propeller. I've ridden in this boat - it is a kidney-busting experience.

Actually, I just wanted a slightly smaller version of the two "speedboats" we use for work: open-hull, center-console outboard. Plenty of room for people or "things," lots of versatility. Matt Hewatt, one of our regular guests (who's been down here so many times and helps us out so much that he ought to be on the payroll) made noises about a boat partnership so he'd have something to play around and go diving with when he was here.

The Boss bought a piece of property from a guy who was leaving Guanaja. The deal came with other things, among them a boat. ...An open-hull, center-console, with a 60 h.p. Yamaha outboard! It had been in storage since 2004, but was pronounced solid by people who know about such things. It was offered to me for a good price. Needless to say, I jumped on it like a zit-faced, virgin teenager who'd just been offered a "sleepover" playdate with Paris Hilton.

Mi lancha nueva (my new boat)

Ta-da! Stranded no longer!

Now, couple of problems right off the bat. First, no top. Needs one of those cool Bimini tops like our other boats have (gotta have some shade). That's easy. Second, only 60 horsepower? Come on, man! I need, like, 200. Back in Florida, my friends ribbed me unmercifully because I drove a Dodge Neon. "Chick car," they called it, alluding to my lack of penisization. Not that I am sensitive to such insults, mind you (who, me?), but if I ever do buy another car it will be a "mid-life crisis" Dodge Viper with that muscular, Corvette-shaming V-10 engine! Or maybe a big, bad-ass 4WD pick'emup truck. Adios, chick-car. Hello, chick-magnet!

According to the records, the boat is 16.5 feet long. But honestly, it drives really well, like a good 17-footer. I mean, when you're in it you'd swear...

The boat has already been called "cute," "sweet," and I thought I heard someone say "darling," but when I looked around they had turned away and were covering their mouth (a snicker, perhaps?), so I'm pretty sure they were referring to the lancha. I'm glad to see that guys are guys the world over. It restores my faith in humanity.

Seriously, it is kind of small. Three grown men and their dive gear, that's all or we're shipping water over the transom. But at least it is fast, even with that puny 60 h.p. engine (must be light). And it doesn't seem to use much gas at all. So we'll have to see if it sticks around, or if I end up with something slightly bigger.

No matter. For the moment, I have wheels, baby! And you know what? It does make me feel like a kid getting his first car. Now, if I can just keep from crashing it, running aground on the reef, or having it drift away when one of my non-Boy Scout knots comes loose... Now all it needs is a name.

No more "Pilot Bob" for me. You can just call me...well, is "Admiral" too presumptuous?

(*Oh, and by the way, yes I know that the F-15 is not a carrier-based fighter, and the U.S.S Iowa was a battleship. Good on those of you who caught it and were going to give me shit on the "Comments" page. Thank you anyway.)

On Flying

I am, in my own estimation a damn good pilot. But then I should be, given the number of years I've been doing it and the amount of experience I've attained. There are two types of professional pilots – the very good and the dead. No in-betweeners, no room for "just average" pilots up there. You’ve got to be good when you're doing it for money (insert cheap, hooker-joke here). I know that must sound horribly pompous, but I have not stayed alive all these years by luck and my movie-star good looks alone. Even the worst of the pro-pilots I've ever known was still pretty dang good.

The trick in all flying (private and professional) is to not think that you're better than you are. Oh boy, is that easier said than done! We get to thinking that we're Chuck Yeager. Or we not-so-subconsciously assume that the very fact that we've survived all these years and amassed all these flight hours makes us good by default. Nope. Not at all, not at all.

If that sounds contradictory to my first paragraph, let me explain. Because of my experience I better be good, yes. But that, by itself, does not make it so. Many pilots make that mistake, and it is a doozy. We pilots are cautioned to guard against complacency, and most of us try pretty hard to avoid it. Despite that, sometimes there is an insidious complacency that worms its way unknowingly into even the most careful pilot’s psyche.

Being a good pilot requires constant work. You can never sit back and rest on your...um...laurels and think that "good" is automatic or even continuous or self-sustaining. And so I work very hard at maintaining my proficiency. And I very much admire those other pilots who do likewise.

Take Mike, our fixed-wing pilot. (He reads this, so I have to choose my words carefully.) He's not the only good pilot in the world, obviously, but Mike is - no shit - one of the best pilots I've ever flown with. The guy just flat knows his stuff and can make that King Air dance and sing. Of course, Mike's been doing it forever (you should see his resume), and he’s flown much bigger things than a King Air, so he should be good. The thing I love is that he still puts as much effort into his work this far down the road as he undoubtedly did when he was first starting out. That's is the very definition of “professionalism” and “dedication,” words we sometimes throw around all too casually these days.

I like watching other pilots fly – always have. You can learn a lot. When I was working for Petroleum Helicopters Inc. in the Gulf of Mexico, I was assigned to a base that had thirty resident aircraft. Most days, after I got off duty I’d just hang around, watching the stragglers come in. End of the long day, tired, hot, worn out…you could forgive these guys if they just swooped in and plopped it down like a sack of wet cement. But no, they would put as much effort into that last landing as they did to the first one this morning, twelve hours ago. It was inspiring.

There was this one guy…Joe Bell (an ironically coincidental name for a helicopter pilot). Older guy, retired out of the Army. Been around. Soft-spoken (unlike most of us) and very likeable (also unlike most of us). He got assigned to a oil company customer flying a snazzy, shiny-new Bell 407. But it was a h-o-r-r-i-b-l-e job. Always first to take-off in the morning, right at sunrise. And his customer flew him the absolute FAA-maximum of eight hours every damn day. Usually he’d come dragging in right at sunset, but other days he’d get his eight hours in by three p.m. and be done before all the rest of us. Oh God, I felt sorry for him. I’d come skipping and whistling in from my air-conditioned, twin-engine helicopter after a “grueling” 3.5 hour day in which I'd done maybe eight or nine landings, my day done by 4:30. My paperwork would be finished and I’d be having a cup of coffee in the pilot lounge when Joe would come in looking like a wet dog at 6:50.

Hovering a helicopter is work. It takes incredible concentration. The Bell 407 is a particularly twitchy, not to say “squirrely” helicopter, especially near the ground. It takes finesse to fly smoothly. And here would come ol’ Joe after one of his eight-hour, “thirty-five landing” days. He’d hover up to the front pad and set ‘er down just so smoothly and gently. I'd watch and just shake my head and smile. I admired that guy, I’ll tell you what.

Watching a really good pilot is quite literally like watching an artist at work. It's like looking over Picasso's shoulder as he paints and wondering, "Why is he dabbing the brush like that? Why is he using that particular color? And what the hell IS that thing he's painting?" Pablo himself might not even be able to respond with anything more than a simple, shrugged, "Eh - beats me..."

It's never good to look too closely at something lest you spoil the magic or kill the spirit. Kind of like how looking at a ghost sometimes makes it disappear. Or how your car keys disappear the moment you go looking for them. (Okay wait, strike that last, but you get the idea.) We have these God-given talents. We shouldn’t question them, just make the best of them. As the artist’s talent flows through his hands to the brush and onto the canvas, so a pilot’s talent flows through the stick or wheel and out to the control surfaces or rotor blades.

Ah, but if only it were that simple for us. There is so much other technical stuff to know and keep abreast of. But it is one of the reasons I so love flying: It is the perfect left brain/right brain activity, requiring the constant involvement of both, and as rewarding to the artistic side as it is to the technical side.

I hope that the day I have to lay my paintbrushes down is a long, long way off.

Odds And Ends

Please don’t misunderstand something. When I write about the medevac flights I do, it is not out of a sense of self-aggrandizement or because I’m looking for a pat on the back. It is merely because I think what my boss is doing is a wonderful thing for this place…this little slice of what would otherwise be paradise called Guanaja. The people here need so much; that’s pretty clear. The fact that we can help in our small way makes me feel pretty damn good. But not only that. I love it when helicopters can be used to help people. It is the most noble use of the machine in my humble opinion, and I’m proud to brag a little about our ship.

* * *

Lalo called me last night, all excited. You have to know Lalo. And if you did you would love him. A big, burly, teddy-bear of a man, black as the ace of spades, always smiling, always animated, always in a good mood, with eyes that light up like ornaments on a Christmas tree when he talks…which is in a mild Caribbean patois…almost Jamaican but not quite. He’s all-business on the job, but sometimes when he sees me somewhere else, he’ll give me one of those playful, vice-like hugs that squeezes the air out of me and lifts me off my feet like a ragdoll. We should all have friends like Lalo.

“Bob! Bob!” he said excitedly. He always starts out his conversations with me that way and I always chuckle when he does. “You know what that little shit went and did?”

I knew he meant Jose-Luis. I braced for collision. Now what?

“He done got himself a JOB, son! He working on the yacht!”

I asked Lalo how Jose-Luis got the job…was it something he did?

“No, Bob. People know him! They know he family. They know he got them three chirren!”

Well, maybe. Methinks bigmouth Lalo just put a bug in the right person’s ear.

But uh-oh, that’s one of those good news/bad news kind of things. The “yacht,” the ferry that makes a couple of trips a week between here and the mainland port of Trujillo, gets my vote for the boat Most-Likely-To-Turn-Turtle-And-Go-Right-To-The-Bottom-In-The-Awful-Conditions-Of-A-Perfectly-Calm-Clear-Day. So while I am happy for Jose-Luis that he has a steady income again, I’ll have to keep praying for him even harder than ever now.

The yacht was leaving for Trujillo this morning, so I went into town to see Jose-Luis and give him a little support…give him the Stern-Parent, "I’m happy for you but don’t screw this up" talk. Which, come to think of it…talk about role-reversal! Whoa, when did that happen? It wasn’t all that long ago when people were having that talk with me. At least, it doesn’t seem so.

* * *

I talked with our employee Fidel Hernandez today. It was his father whom I took down to La Ceiba on Sunday after his accident. When I asked about him, Fidel broke into a big smile. “Good! Good!” he said. “Thank you!” he said, gratefully pumping my hand. And I was thinking to myself: Hey don’t shoot me, I’m only the piano player. (That was the title to an old Elton John album, and I’ve always wanted to worm it into one of my posts some day. Finally got the chance!)

¡Un buen día! A good day. A very good day!

Three-Four Whiskey To The Rescue! Again.

...And I was just telling The Boss about how the medevac flights had dropped off. Somehow, I knew it wouldn't be long until we were called again. I wasn't wrong. Got the call Sunday morning at 10:30. An MVA (that's police/medical people short-hand for motor vehicle accident).

We have a total of...oh, eight, maybe nine cars/trucks on Guanaja and maybe as many small motorcycles, most of them on the road between Savannah Bight and Mangrove Bight. I personally have been in the back of a stake-body truck over there, jammed in with a bunch of other guys, women and children, thinking to myself that if the driver so much as goes off into a ditch it's gonna be ugly.

These people here do not know how to drive. There are no driver education schools. They have no sense of "keep right." Many guys assume that they can drive a boat, so driving a car should be a piece of cake. One of the things I have feared is that with the proliferation of cars on Guanaja there would be accidents. There'll be single-vehicle accidents (car runs off road into tree), vehicle/vehicle, and vehicle/pedestrian accidents. With these accidents are going to come injuries.

But we have just a couple of medical clinics here, and they can provide only a limited amount of care. Anything more serious than a few stitches and you're in trouble, bub. Which is where we come in: There are no commuter airline flights in or out of Guanaja on Sundays, so the helicopter is really the only realistic way off the island. The wind has been blowing lately, and the seas have been miserably rough. Boat rides can be downright dangerous for otherwise healthy people. Hit a big wave while sitting in the wrong position can throw your back out, big time. (Don't ask my how I know. But I do not sit down in rough water anymore; I only stand.)

What scares me...and I mean that literally...is that the number of vehicles here will grow faster than our medical facilities can handle the inevitable accidents. I.E., people are going to die. It's as simple as that. As great as the helicopter is, it can't work miracles. Ours is not one of these "flying emergency rooms" like a lot of air ambulances today. With ours, we yank the seats out and put a stretcher in and go, baby!

But we are not a commercial operation. Plus, our availability is not guaranteed. The lack of a small part can keep us grounded for a protracted period of time. It weighs heavily on me. I'd hate to have to turn a flight down for someone with a dire need. Luckily this helicopter is pretty dependable. It's an incredible ship, and I've grown quite fond of it.

As a side and lighter note, I should point out that the marvelous FH1100 helicopter was the first helicopter used as a dedicated air-ambulance in the United States way back in 1969. It was the model chosen for a special year-long demonstration in the state of Mississippi, funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation. It provided 24/7 statewide helicopter air ambulance coverage. You can read about it here on this page of the factory's website www.fh1100.com (but basically I just told you all about it). It's an interesting story, and it proved the value of using helicopters as air ambulances - as if that needed proving. Now, nearly forty years later they are commonplace in virtually every community, even tiny little Guanaja, Bay Islands, Honduras. Sort of.

During Project CARE-SOM, the FH1100s and its medical crews were often the first ones on the scene after the police. "Snatch and run." When I worked at the factory I got to know one of the pilots who flew on the project, and the stories he could tell!

Things have changed. These days, when the "EMS" (Emergency Medical Service) helicopter is usually called to a scene, it will not be the "first-responder." There will always be ground medical crews there who'll stabilize the injured and prepare them for transport, whether it be air or ground. At that point the decision will be made. This just makes good medical sense.

The guy yesterday is the father of one of our workers. He was on a motorcycle that somehow came together with a car at a blind spot in the road. And they said he was hurt bad - needed the helicopter ASAP. I hustled out the door to get the helicopter ready and get my stuff together.

The rendevouz point was the soccer field in Savannah Bight, exactly the same place I dropped off Marcos when I brought him up from La Ceiba. I've mentioned before that I don't like these "site-landings" as we call them. The helicopter always attracts a lot of attention and draws a big crowd. There are no police here, so needless to say there is no crowd control. There is always the danger of someone walking into my tail rotor, so I'm extremely paranoid.

As I circle over the soccer field, I see the crowd around the injured man, and more headed that way from all compass points. I sigh to myself; it's going to be a zoo. When I delivered Marcos home, it was pandemonium as soon as I shut down. Surprisingly, oddly, the mob is somber and extremely well-behaved. They respectfully stand back and let the guys do their work of loading the man into the ship. And the man is in pretty bad shape, they did not exaggerate. Perhaps the people are aware of the gravity of the situation. Kids do mill around, but they give the helicopter (which I leave running) room. It's strange.

I assure my employee that I will have his father in the hospital in 45 minutes. He looks at me gratefully and says thanks. The man's wife climbs in next to her husband and we beat-feet out of there as fast as my little helicopter will go.

The actual flight is uneventful. In fact it is a beautiful day and flight. I can see the mainland as soon as I take off. And it strikes me that as great a flight as this is, my passengers cannot enjoy it. Alas, that's the dichotomy of the air ambulance.

Intervention

Well we did take Jose-Luís out to the West Peak Inn for our little "...or else" talk. Lalo figured it was remote enough that he couldn't walk out on us, which was true. If you don't have a boat (or a helicopter!), you can't get there from here. It was also a safe bet that we wouldn't be interrupted, and could talk in peace.

Now, it is not fair to characterize Jose-Luís as a semi-coherent, strung-out crack addict who can’t go more than a few minutes without a “fix” any more than I am falling-down-drunk alcoholic. In fact, he functions perfectly normally during the day without any kind of intoxicant. He is usually a pleasure to be and have around.

It’s just that he likes to party at night. And he becomes a different person. Once he gets started he has absolutely no self-control. Rent money? Food money? Power bill money? He’d spend them all in a single night. If we pay him on Friday, his money is gone by Monday. This happens every week. (Maybe we should start paying our guys on Monday instead of Friday! Hmmm.) Addicted is addicted. I like to drink, but I don’t steal to support my Rum and Coke habit.

Lalo acted as a go-between/interpreter since Jose-Luís speaks virtually no English.

I wanted Lalo to make sure that Jose-Luís understood that this bail-out came with strings; he had to do his part. We had expectations. There would be no second-chance – this was it. We would help him this time, but he had to help himself. And by that we meant staying away from those destructive “friends” with whom he was inclined to engage in bad behavior. Lalo said that he’d be keeping his eye on him. (And believe me, nothing happens in Bonacca Town without Lalo knowing about it. If someone drops a dish, Lalo knows before it hits the floor.) We did stress that if Jose-Luís did not change his ways, he would lose his wife and kids, his place to live. Not “could” or “might”…but would lose those things.

Those were the stakes. Now, the big question: Is that stuff important to him? I honestly believe that to some people it is not. They are so self-absorbed and self-involved that they actually, deep-down cannot and do not care about anyone else, even their own offspring. Unfortunately, sometimes these people marry and have children.

As we talked, I looked in Jose-Luís’ tear-filled eyes, trying to determine if he was genuinely sincere in his nervous apologies and anxious promises, or just telling us what we wanted to hear. I’ve been down this road before and I’ve been lied to by the best. It has made me jaded, suspicious and somewhat callous. People lie, it’s that simple. People will do whatever they have to do to extricate themselves from this particular situation here, this jam-up right now. They’ll worry about tomorrow when it gets here. Things have always worked out for them in the past. There’ll be another Lalo and Robert and Mr. Bob who’ll bail them out.

So I really don’t know. All I do know is that I’m no accurate judge of people. I cannot predict what Jose-Luís will do this weekend when faced with the same friends and temptations as he was last weekend and the weekend before that and all the weekends before that. Will he sit at home with his wife and toddler children, just enjoying their company and reveling in the fact that he has a wonderful family? Will he go to bed early Saturday night and get up early Sunday morning to take the family to church? Or will the “fun” of running the streets with his friends be so attractive and compelling that he’ll go out “just for one beer” and end up staying out all night? I know what you’re thinking. I’m thinking it too.

I hate being a pessimist with stuff like this. Normally I like to think positively, and I do believe in the power of prayer. So who can tell? I do know how addictive cocaine (especially crack) can be. I know how hard it is for some people to quit. There are no formal treatment or “rehab” programs of any kind here. But even if there were, it would be incredibly difficult for him. This guy is teetering on the edge, one foot out in the air and the other on a banana peel. A feather’s touch could push him into the abyss. It’ll be interesting to see if we can pull him back to safety.

Back at the dock at the end of the day, Jose-Luís got out of the boat to leave. “¡Es importante que recuerde que sobre hablamos!” I said, which was my pigeon-Spanish way of saying “Remember what we talked about.” “Sí, sí,” he said.

I certainly hope he does. We’ll know soon enough.

The Things People Do

Lalo, one of our formen/supervisors called me yesterday. “Bob! Bob!” he said in his typically hyper/excited tone. “I want to take you out to dinner tonight…on me.”

Hmm. I’ve been here…what…eight months now, and in that time Lalo has never asked to take me out to dinner. I knew something was up – just didn’t know what. I suggested Graham’s, which is a bar/restaurant/resort just “up the road” from us in the cay chain that rings Guanaja. Close enough to walk or swim home if I had to. And I mean that literally – at low tide you could actually walk down the reef.

Here’s where I need to digress. We had this guy working for us, Jose-Luis. A good kid. Always smiling, always willing to do whatever was asked of him. The kind you look at and go, “Gee, I wish I had twenty or thirty more just like him.” A likeable, youthful guy, I assumed he was in his early twenties. Uh-uh. Turns out he was twenty-nine when I first met him. He’s since turned 30. Naturally there is the wife and three kids at home, one a newborn.

The typically dour Jose-Luis, hauling sandbags as we built a jetty in our marina

The catch was that Jose-Luis is a “rocker,” Guanaja slang for coke-head. Realize, crack cocaine is one of the most powerfully addictive drugs out there. Right up on a par with crystal-meth, evidently. Not impossible to kick, but maybe so here in this place. The odds are just against it. Even if you went to rehab and got over the addiction, if you came back and hung around with the same guys in the same places, you’d be back doing it in no time at all. For some of these guys, their only hope at this point is prayer.

People who get addicted to crack do things that they would never do under normal circumstances. And they do it without even blinking or feeling the slightest bit of remorse. For Jose-Luis, getting that next hit was more important than anything else in the world.

His real problem was that his addiction and other certain related behavior came to be noticed by the Boss. The Boss who has a zero-tolerance policy on drugs. Which meant Jose-Luis was out. Just like that, gone. (In defense of the Boss, there were many other issues that resulted in the termination, not just the fact that Jose-Luis was on crack. But it did play large.)

Hey, the guy created his own problems; sucks to be him. The usual phone calls were made from various people asking for his job back. No dice. “Fired For Cause.”

Which brings us to last night…

Lalo and I were enjoying a nice evening. (It’s always a nice evening when someone else is paying for the food and booze.) After a few lubricating Rum and Cokes, he got down to business. I knew he would eventually, but it was sooner rather than later.

“Bob, what are we going to do about that little shit?”

I knew who he was talking about. “Lalo, the guy got himself into this. It’s his own fault. Let him fix his own mess.”

“Bob, listen to me, son,” Lalo continued in his paternal, almost-stern way. (He is younger than me by a good bit, yet he often lectures me like a child.) “He landlord is going to put him out on the street! He got a wife and three kids! We can NOT let that happen," he said adamantly, adding, "I already gave his wife 2,000 lempira.”

It must be said here that next to the Boss, Lalo is the most generous guy in all of Guanaja. He would give you the shirt off his back and his sneakers too if you needed them. He is a truly great human being who absolutely does not know how to say no to people. He never has any money because he gives it all away.

I shook my head and shrugged. “It’s not our problem, man. You can’t save them all. People have to learn to be responsible. He’ll manage.”

Lalo gets this look on his face and a tone in his voice when he wants something and isn’t going to take “no” for an answer. He ordered up another round and let the subject drop. We were joined by Robert, the captain of the Lady Carminda, a cargo boat that runs regularly between Guanaja and La Ceiba. Robert is a super guy who helps us out immensely. He and Lalo have been lifelong friends. You can just tell that they’d do anything for each other.

A couple of Rum and Cokes later (okay, by that time I’d lost count and to prove it I have a god-awful headache this morning as I write this), Lalo broached the subject again.

“Bob, we got to do something for that little shit.”

I sighed, sensing that I was fighting a losing battle. He’s like a dog with a bone! “Lalo, look. The only way Jose-Luis is going to survive is if he can get out of here…get away from this place and get off the crack.”

“He needs a job on a boat,” Lalo suggested.

“Can’t we find him one?” I asked.

“I can do that,” Robert chimed in. Until that point, he hadn’t been involved in this discussion, but it was clear that he was already up to speed on the subject.

Long story-short, Lalo convinced me to go with him, Robert and Jose-Luis to a place called the West Peak Inn this morning. The plan is to have a no-compromises, come-to-Jesus talk with Jose-Luis. We’ll keep him and his family from being kicked out on the street, but this is not a free pass.

It’s touching, the way these two generous-to-a-fault guys go to such lengths to help people out. I mean, they themselves have so little, yet they give so much. I don’t know if our little talk with the guy is going to do any good, but I suppose it’s worth a shot. I just see that it's going to cost me money. More money. And I suppose there’ll be a Part II to this story sooner or later. I just hope it’s good news rather than bad. We'll see.

Coincidentally…why does this happen…as I’m writing this post I’ve got the satellite radio (XM Café) on low in the background. Sure enough, they play “All Of My Friends,” a wonderful song about friendship (duh) by a rather obscure artist named Goat. The CD came out last year. It’s the weirdest blend of genres and styles you could ever imagine. Why Goat isn't a more popular artist I'll never know. But I’ve loved that song ('cuz you know I have the best friends in the world) – even have it on the iPod. Odd that XM picked that exact time to play it. You’ve just got to love life’s continuing element of chance.

Bird's Eye View

Check it out!

Guanaja, taken from the CIA satellite stationed directly overhead

When MSNBC published this picture, we were all tickled down here. We knew that the U.S. government had a "bird" hovering above us - we just didn't think they'd ever admit it. But they recently released this low-resolution image, probably because it's such a neat shot. We know that they're capable of seeing things as small as a license plate on a car - they've admitted that. Heck, GoogleEarth now has public-domain pictures that are of such fine resolution that you can see individual houses and cars!

In a way, it's kind of spooky, realizing that the government is watching over us so closely. There are days when I'm laying out naked on our beach (when there are no guests and the caretaker and his kids are gone, of course) and I look up and think, "Getting a good shot of my ass, guys?" (I am a prude - I only lay out face-down, thank you very much.)

What I like about the above picture is that it provides an overview of our island that I have not yet been able. You can clearly see the coral reef that rings the entire island.

It seems to me that Guanaja was once three separate islands. Over time, they filled in to the one more or less contiguous mass we have today.

Notes: #4 Bayman Bay and #10 Posada del Sol are closed - for now.

About half of Guanaja's 12,000 people live in Bonacca Town (#1 "the Cay") and in the small adjacent town of Pelican (not shown).

There were two airports in the low lands. In 1998 Hurricane Mitch parked itself over Guanaja for three days and just about obliterated the place. Virtually every structure in the town of Mangrove Bight (#7) was literally blown away. Those permanently displaced camped wherever they could. A big, flat dirt runway in the are between Savannah Bight (#9) and Mangrove Bight was a pretty good place, and many homesteaded there. The town of Mitch (#17) sprang up there and was named in honor of its origin. A semi-paved road connects the three towns.

There are a number of, ahhh, establishments on the island's north side. I've written about Bo's Island House (#5) before. Just down the beach is End Of The World (#8) which is right by Michael's Rock (#18). Rumors abound about Bayman Bay - maybe it will, maybe it won't. Keep heading west past the airport (#2) and canal (#14) and you'll get to the West Peak Inn (#3). But that end of the island is not hooked into the power grid, so staying there would probably be "rustic" (unless they run their generator 24/7).

Back on the south side, there's Manati (#11) and Graham's Place (#15).

And now, to answer the age-old question: WHERE THE HELL IS GUANAJA?

I've put in a little pointer, just in case a gnat or a flea has landed on your computer screen thereby covering up our island.

Guanaja is a strange place...a small, undiscovered, undeveloped, unspoiled gem in the western Caribbean. It's amazing how close we are to the United States...and at the same time how very far away.