No Time for Pants!

Don't always laugh at the ostensible eccentrics of your friends and loved ones.

Several weeks ago, I was having a rare, fantastic sleep in my new world; the hurricane shutter was rolled up and the screen door was letting the cool Caribbean tradewinds blow across my bed. It was immaculately peaceful.... Suddenly at around 4 AM there was an awful noise coming from the outside, I immediately thought that some vagabond had scaled the gate to my apartment complex and was trying to come in through the flimsy mesh that serves as my back door to the apartment. Rubbing the sands of sleep out of my eyes, I hopped up and saw an enormous blue crab of epic proportions...

"da da chum...da da chuk" it said (fans of Stephen King's Dark Tower series will understand the crab language) and quickly side stepped out into the darnkess.

Confused and confounded and too tired to understand the craziness of what just happened on my back patio I just went back to sleep. Remembering my nocturnal experience on the following morning I was eager to share my exciting news with my neighbor on our daily walk to school.

"Man, you're crazy..you dreamt all of that," he said, "there is no way that there is a crab that big this far from the ocean."

hmmm, I thought, he may have a point there, it does seem kind of unreasonable and we are about 1500 yards from the ocean here...so maybe I did envision the entrire thing. No more thoughts about it, and no other discussions arose, we just discounted it as a figment of my imagination, or the first signs of sleep deprived mass medical information absorbing induced lunacy!

until....

Last Friday night at the magic hour of 4AM, there was all sorts of commotion coming from our friend's apartment next door...this was the dialogue that was shouted through the walls..

"ooooh Lord look at that!"

"I gotta go next door and wake up Leah and Aaron" as she dashed out the door in her undies and sleep shirt....

"Amanda, what about your pants," James says!

"There's no time for pants"

"There's always time for pants!!"

BAM!! BAM!!! BAM!!!

The front door begins to cave in, and pieces of sheet rock and window molding begin to fall onto the floor of the living room.
Oh dear, here is the earthquake that is going to kill us all, we thought.

We jerked the door open, to find Amanda donning her pants and panting feverently, "you gotta come see, you gotta come see...."

Weary and still a bit silly from the post block exam celebrations..we half heartedly stumbled next door to see what all the fuss was about, and there once again trying to gain access into yet another home was the return of the crab of unusual size...

"HA!! See dude," I shouted, "I told you, I told you that I was not crazy" (I'm not sure if I was convincing him or myself at this point cause I was beginning to wonder)

"I know, I saw the security guards at the school fighting with one, but I wasn't going to tell you that you really did see it"

"Thanks"

The next morning Leah and I woke up fresh and anew, now knowing that I was not going insane and having nocturnal hallucinations. We packed up some lunch and lots of water, lathered up with 85 spf and went looking for the hidden beach that I had found on my first week of island life.

We made a leisurely drive along the French coastline for a short time before diverting into what is called the "middle ground" near the town of Rambaud. There is a road that leads up to he highest peak on the island that is called Pic Paradis, which is pointed out here on Google Maps The peak is around 400 meters above sea level and we hiked out to the cliff that looked over the town le Quatier d'Orleans. The tiny one way road to the top was littered with pot holes, zillion foot drop offs on the right hand side and switchbacks that cut back about 20 degrees to the road you were on, the cliffs overhung the roadway and the vines reached all the way down to the patchwork asphalt...once at the top there was not much maneuvering room to turn around and park the car, I almost lost the entire disposable car down the mountain as you can see. I don't know what told me to stop backing up but I am glad that it did!

The hiking path to the lookout area was fairly well marked and not too difficult.






It was definitely worth all the trouble.....

looking across at le Quatier d'Orleans and the Caribbean

the view

After narrowly missing plunging down the side of the mountain in a $1300 car we decided to press onward toward the northern tip of the French side of the island, near Anse Marcel and the French Cul de Sac. After picking our way through the weekend traffic of the locals going to the Marigot fish market and a few burros we made it to the beginning of the trail.

After completing the hike over the 1.5 mile coral encrusted trail we were well rewarded with complete solitude on one of the most beautiful spots on the island.

The weather was perfect: light winds, scattered wisps of clouds over brilliant blue skies, reflected on crystal green waters. The Caribbean was unusually calm for that area of the island and the air was light with humidity and brilliantly clear giving a beautiful view of Anguilla and Ille Tintamarre in the distance.
You can view the beach at Petites Cayes here with Google maps

After soaking up the sun for several hours and watching the few catamarans skate past in the distance heading to Ille Tintamarre, we packed up the umbrella and beach gear and went in search of some wonderful island food.

We happened up on a huge music festival in Marigot, there were bands playing on every street corner it seemed and better than that almost everyone in the town was cooking Caribbean BBQ and wanted us to come have a bite of their jerk chicken or spicy short ribs. It was all amazing, firey hot with just enough citrus to keep you from spontaneously combusting. We listened to as many bands as we could and mostly just walked the streets visiting with people from all over the world, hearing French, Dutch, Spanish and Papiamentu all spoken on the same block....how great it is to experience such diversity.

Stuffed bellies, sun soaked skin and tired legs from a day full of hiking and street cruising drove us back home to enjoy a nice study free day (one must have these from time to time or those crabs start showing up in the oddest places). We had been gone for about 7 hours, which was plenty of time for Iva the awful, Iva the terrible, Iva the hideous to let us know that she was quite agitated about our extended time away. She ate the fabric covering the cushion as well as a portion of the cushion itself, Hooray!

So much for that security deposit!

A study free day is always followed by a day of panic..why oh why did I go and play yesterday. Sunday (Father's day) was a 7 hour day of reading, note summarizing, and attempting to figure out how to read genetic pedigrees and DNA arrays. But all is well, things are going smoothly, the mind is absorbing, the time is being managed. It was nice to take another nice break Sunday evening and celebrate Father's day (sans children unfortunately) with some good friends at the sushi restaurant in Maho, about 2 miles from the house. It was a cool, little modern Japanese, deco place that had great prices, fantastic sushi, and wonderfully fresh tuna shashimi. We even persuaded Amanda into eating her first piece of real sushi..

The following week went blazing by, its easy to loose all track of time when all you do is go to class, eat, go to lab for 3 hours and dissect, go home, eat, return to the school with enough water and snacks to last you for 6-7 hours of studying. Then sleep, get up and repeat, so you can at least have one day of a quasi-normal life for one day on the weekend.

This week full of studying led up to learning about the fish market in Marigot, we rose at 0500 on Saturday to drive into Marigot for the opening bells at the fish market at 0530. Once again our bit of determination was rewarded, one of the fishermen had just brought in a 4.5 ft. mahi mahi and was beginning to clean it and cut it into steaks. After a small bit of haggling and mentally converting Euros into US dollars we walked away with a few beautiful mahi mahi steaks that were begging to be put on the grill. So that meant a stop by the local hardware store and and pick up a modest charcoal grill, just something to put a bit of charcoal in and direct a flame at some flesh. The steaks were amazing, after soaking all day (which gave me a perfect time to study a bit more, this genetics is awfully time consuming) in a delicious marinade of fresh lemon and lime juice and rubbed down with some local homemade jerk seasoning and a dash of Louisiana hot sauce (yes I found it down here I couldn't believe) they were cooked slow and immensely enjoyed by the few of us that live in the apartment complex with a couple of bottles of Pinot Grigio. Enjoying good friends, fantastic food, looking up at clear starlit skies and breathing sweet, fresh Caribbean air...How good life is!!!

Saturday's early morning fish market escapade helped me develop a new weekend study strategy, studying early in the morning works out wonderfully and sure frees up an afternoon. Completely frees it up where one isn't panicking about what he does or does not know. So Sunday was the trial run, and I think it will stick...after putting in 7 hours Sunday morning, the afternoon was reserved for Dawn Beach.

This is probably the best snorkeling spot on the entire island, the reef is only 50 yards off shore and the water gets as shallow as 2 feet in places because the reef is so enormous. It extends the entire length of the beach and extends out into the Caribbean as far as you want to swim. We even let Iva the masticator go so that she wouldn't tear up anything else in the house.

James and Amanda and their coconut retriever, Layla, went with us to check out the snorkeling spot but had their serenity disrupted by the ominous presence of a local... here is James' account of how their afternoon went....

Amanda and I went snorkeling at Dawn Beach (Beautiful beach with a really amazing reef that stretches out to form a wall around the mouth of the bay) and saw the biggest barracuda I have ever heard of. Right up in our faces, the girth of his enormous head filled the window of my mask..

From a distance I thought it was like 12 feet long and 2 feet wide. When I looked it up the record caught barracuda was just over 6’ long but it didn’t say how wide they get. This one looked really wide for a barracuda and apparently when they get old they grow in girth and not so much in length.

I know that things appear larger when under water so it may have been 7-8’ long but the girth of this fish looked bigger than my thorax. Regardless of its true size it was ridiculously intimidating and not nearly as appealing as the way Ann and Nancy Wilson tried to make them out to be. (okay for those not musically inclined these gals are the founding sisters of Heart...you know ooooooooo Barracuda)

I thought it was a huge shark at first but then I realized that the head was too round for a shark. I threw Amanda behind me and started pushing her towards shore. It was coming right at us, and when I say that I mean that I wasn’t taking the circle and observe approach but the B-line, consume and swim away approach. I turned my body towards it and put my limbs out to look as big as possible in hopes that I might look like I could at least put up a fight.

I have read, and been told, that barracuda follow you because you look like a big predator and they just want to eat the scraps of something that you catch. If that is the case then I would have been fine if my first big barracuda was less than 6’ long. But compared to this mofo I was a big snack. This was honestly the first time in my life I saw a predator and felt like I was going to get eaten.

Looking back on it the way it all began was kind of funny:

We had just passed between a break in the reef creating a gateway to open water and it was about 20' deep. All of the sudden a large school of these little silver fish go darting past us.

I was thrilled at first and then I got to thinking, “When I watch The Little Mermaid and there is a school of little fish darting by you and not even paying attention to you what does that normally mean?” Then I answered, “That generally means that there is something that is a lot meaner looking than you coming from that direction!!” Just as this dawned on me this huge ominous shadow came lurking towards us through the haze! This was the kind of barracuda that barracudas fear and great whites envy. It was just like a creepy movie scene, I think the guy that wrote those scenes in the movies had this happen to him.

As I swam for shore (my life) I kept Amanda in front of me and I kept looking back and watching him come towards us. It stayed coming straight at us for probably 20 yards. I looked forward to check the distance to shore and when I turned to look back the fish was gone. Like a ninja. All I kept thinking is this giant torpedo of a fish is going to come out of nowhere and flank us...cutting off our retreat to shore. Just past half way back on our half mile swim to shore Amanda got tired so I had her grab on my back and hold on while I swam my ass off.

I couldn’t even go back in to the water up to my chest because I kept thinking that there was a giant, hungry barracuda out there thinking to himself, ”they looked kinda tasty I wish I had just taken one little bite (one little bite in this case would have been my leg)"

But not all Dawn Beach experiences are quite as adrenaline surging. I had gone out for about an hour before the Barracuda incident and had an amazing encounter. The reef is covered with brain coral, staghorn coral and the largest fan coral I have ever seen. I went out in an attempt to hunt up a tasty lobster to cook up for the eveing, but no such luck; the reef was so enormous and so diverse there was no way I was going to be able to hunt one down until I am able to get my breath hold increased to 2 minutes (lobstering by Scuba is strictly prohibited anywhere). Most of the other beaches on the island are protected under the Natural Preserve and Dawn beach is one of the only spots for trying your luck. Looking in all the all the cracks and under the ledges for the elusive Caribbean lobster I spotted more fish than I can name, tons of grouper, tang, yellow tail snapper, and puffers were everywhere. The greatest moment was when I spotted a school of about 100-150 blue tang in 15 feet of water. I dove for them and instead of all scattering in every direction like they always do, the fish at the top of the school just sort of moved out of the way and let me in the middle of the school and then moved right back into position above me...there I was free diving in the middle of a moving wall of blue tang.

It was unreal...surreal. I nearly forgot that I was an air breather. What a memory....

picture this multiplied by 150 surrouding you in 15 feet of crystal green/blue water

Well its midnight on the 18th parallel, time to sleep so I can get up and do this all over again...

Iva and the LSU disposable car watching the kite surfers at Orient Bay

St. Maarten Sherpas

Caribbean Sherpas

Another week of feverent panic and overwhelming resolution has once again arrived and departed. By conquering the second set of block exams, the incoming May 2009 class now have 10% of the steps necessary to complete the basic sciences portion of this epic journey towards the Grail-like M.D....only 90% more to go ;-). What a way to begin a day---a one hour 50 question Histolgy exam, followed by a 40 minute break, only to jump right into the 40 quesiton Molecular Cell Biology exam, and rounding off the A.M. with another 40 question written exam on Human Anatomy. What happiness, 180 hours of studying regurgitated in 3 seperate and sequential 50 minute sessions.

Study through lunch

The last hour of the testing day was spent staring at formaldeyhde infused cadavers squinting our eyes to identify tiny phrenic and chorda typmani nerves and fantastic muscles like the salpingopharyngeus (i promise that this is truly a real name). Many sleepless nights, aching backs and computer strained eyes were suddenly relieved as "time" was called on the last exam of the day. Upon that magical sound, the crown of sun starved students broke out to all areas of the compass in search of their respective extracurricular activities and libations of choice.

Several of us chose to unwind at Happy Bay, a small seculded beach that is about a 20 minute hike from Friar's Bay. This beach is the picture that comes to your mind when someone says "Caribbean Beach", it has all the sterotypical elements: beautifuly soft sand, turquoise green water that is clear like a windowpane, long palm trees slightly bent by the constant refreshing trade winds, and a gentle crashing surf that broke over a colorful reef. Perfect!

We also decided that snorkeling would not be sufficient to explore the underwater world that Happy Bay had to offer, Scuba would be the only way to completely unwind the tension brought on from the rigors of the previous weeks madding study marathon. But how to get the gear across mountain on a 20 minute hike. Ingenuity that's how. A quick dissasembly of two mops and the de-bedspreading of one of our beds made a wonderful boy-scout like stretcher that could pack the Scuba tank and other necessary gear. But to our dismay once the women-type folk found that this trip included the utilization of sherpas to pack large cumbersome objects (such as weighted down beach bags) they quickly added to the already mountanous amount of gear that we were taking to our area of unwinding.

We had the entire beach to ourselves, (which was kind of by default since the nudists left when we arrived with all that gear in tow, parading in with 2 wild dogs).

With the aforementioned invaders of "Our Happy Bay" removed from the area, we set up camp under the cool shade of a group of verdent mangroves and began the much deserved unwinding process.

James and Amanda enjoying the sunny day

There was not alot of activity mostly just relaxing and talking about everything in the world that did not involve a nerve lesion syndrome or some type of protein metabolism. The diving was OK, we started late in the evening when the sun had already began setting so the visibilty was not what is would have been at 3PM, but we did see a nice black and white sea snake, not sure which kind but it was fantastic. I was able to check that off of my all time top under sea life to see over this next lifetime of diving.

A little coconut milk mixed with a dash (or maybe a little more than a dash) of sweet Caribbean rum was the perfect topper to a perfectly perfect day. Drinking right from the source is the only way to be a true islander.

James, Allison and I enjoying the coconut milk after Block 2

Iva has quickly conquered her once overbearing fear of the ocean that she displayed only 7 short days ago, she spent most of the day running about in circles at top speed and playing with her new found friend, Layla, the Coconut Retriever that belongs to our neighbors.

Iva also discovered that she not only enjoys running about in the sand, but that it is also a tasty treat as well. She spent a good portion of her time digging an enormous hole in the sand and eating the contents. Well you do know what goes into a hyper dog must come out of a hyper dog....and it did. The next morning we found a perfectly shaped dog poo sand castle lying in the middle of the living room floor.

I'm back in the study pits after my customary "Tueday after blocks study free day" so I must return to my Genetics book and hope that I can somehow manage to understand these chrosomal abnormality diseases before the pirates show back up.

I hope I brought enough coffee....

1/4 Normal to 1/2 Normal

So blocks are coming up in mere 7 days and once again the frantic feverishness has taken a hold on the tired and weary patrons of AUC. On top of beginning to set into panic mode by discovering how much i still do not know, I decided to make an investment into a more beneficial mode of transportation that didn't involve bipedal locomotion. The ad for the car began "a typical island car" loosely translated into English--you can leave this car unlocked and running cause no one is going to steal it.

OK so I'm hooked right there, I do enjoy myself a good adventure. So I call the guy up and he turns out to be an Australian pilot, flying chartered island hoppers all over the Caribbean (what a dream job!!) "so yeah, mate, no worries, no worries, i'v got the kah right ere, you can come take a look at if if y'like" Hell yeah send me some photos i'm liking this more and more as it progresses. I got the photos through a quick email and told him i'd meet him in half an hour.

"Beautiful, mate...I"ll ketch ya down by B.B's"

Upon further inspection, "typical island car" also translates into bearing a bit of rust along the underside of the fender wells, with a few leprous lesions making it onto the body of the "kah" itself. But nothing unbearable, hey there is only 37 square mile of land here, and 85% of the vehicles here suffer from this malady.

"look, mate...I'll be strait up wit' ye...other than the bit of rust, the AC is shot, and the brakes are bit sketchy"

A test drive proved that the brakes had passed "sketchy" about 1,000 km ago, and the mechanic (who works shade tree jobs by the strip joint---true story) said the AC job would cost about $70US.

But not all that bad, after a bit of deliberation and pondering and consulting with the powers that be (wife) we squared away on a nice very low price and that he would fix the brakes and throw in an $250 internet antennae (most of the internet here is provided through the airwaves, not many places are hardwired) SOLD!!!

Now I do not ever want to hear anyone complain about the DMV back in the states ever again. Buying the car and getting the cash here was the easy part. Getting insurance, inspection, and plates is a fantastical journey that sucks up the greater part of the day. There is one inspection depot for the entire dutch side of the island and it rests in an old bombed out gas station in Philipsburg, I entered with extreme caution and was waiting for Jason Vorhees to leap out around the corner at any given moment.

Apparently one does not need to see the vehicle in question to inspect it on the lovely island of St. Maarten, a simple response of "yes" by the handsome patron in front of the desk to the question of "is everything working properly on the vehicle" seems to be quite sufficient (that and a 20 guilder note). The insurance is quite nice $234.34 bought me protection for an entire year, it is cheap because they say no to every claim brought forth to them. I am in the wrong business!!


Like the rest of the island, it doesn't matter how well things get done of if they are done in the proper fashion or not, it just matters if you pay for it properly. There are no vehicle titles here, I have a 5 line bill of sale that Steve Erwin's cousin and I (crikey) signed on the hood of the car in a grocery store parking lot. That bill of sale with a 5 guilder stamp from the government administration office is now my sole claim to the vehicle SWEET!! With that stamped bill of sale, the government office in downtown Philipsburg sold me the annual car plates for $163. What a world we have down here, I may never return to the really real world.

Most of the weekend was spent in the perpetual bounds of this desk chair, trying to get a grip on the mass of papers and textbooks that are scattered from here to there. Saturday, however was a quasi half day off so the 1st semester volleyball team could compete in the highly competitive beach v-ball tournament. Got a hot dog and a sunburn out of the deal and had a fantastic time diving about in the sand like a wild person. Won the first game but lost out on the next 2, which was good cause we all really needed to study.

In other news guess who showed up.

Of course I was in the dissection lab upon Leah's arrival and had to sequester the help of my neighbor to retrieve her from the airport. After I was able to tear myself out of the lab and make sure all the cadaveric particles were off of me, we were able to make a short trip over to Baie Rouge to introduce Iva the Terrible to the ocean.

After some good ribs and chicken kabobs at B.B.'s I had to come put in another 4 hours of studying the doggone regualtion of gene expression, I hope that I can surely use this information somewhere later in my life.

With another part of me at least on the same piece of ground I have made the transition from a lost 1/4 normal person to that off somewhat found 1/2 normal person, I will become fully complete again on July 6.