Barely Coherent

Here comes the hammer!

Let me tell you something coming from a Marine (84-00) that happens to love his country and truely believes that a smaller government is almost always the answer to a problem.

You partisian Republicans are ruining our country. Please get your head out of your ass and see that 'Bush the lesser' is a graver threat to our country than Al Quaeda will ever be. Bush has abdicateed is oath to protect and defend The Consitution. 

18 March 2007 (Sunday)

Time to go home :(

Went to Ruby's again. Very nice morning. A bit overcast and cooler than it has been. Rained overnight. Can still see the rain off in the distance.

Michelle and I made the trip to the water taxi with a stack of bags. Then she went back to turn in the keys and get kids and last few bags.

The trip to San Pedro took about 1:20. This included a stop in Caye Caulker. It took the same amount of time as the express. It was a faster boat. So not sure the express is the best value.

Jason met us at the terminal and we had a nice scenic drive back to the airport. Drove past the Prime Minister's house. He had tons of good historic and cultural information. Saw some minonttes on the way.

Checked bags without too much trouble. Some guy in front of us tried to check a big stick (about 7 foot of stick). They would not take it and he could not carry it on. He had to ship it back. Some guy also packed a Belikian Beer in his bag. He then dropped his bag. Beer everywhere.

The exit tax was $130. Found out during Xray that conch shells are not permitted in carry ons. Had to do a quick additional bag to check and crossed our fingers. Got to passenger lounge. For 4 hour wait! We could have taken the 11:30 water taxi :(

Spoke with one of the chaperones of the education majors doing some work in San Pedro. Found out kids books have a life of about 30 days in San Pedro (weather and kids take a quick toll on the books).

Sat with Q, flight was uneventful.

LONG lines at immigration. The line, while long constantly moved. Customs was not bad. Some dumbass (had a wife and 2 kids in tow) was trying to argue with the customs official about something and held up our line. The guy eventually got moved over to 'the rooms'.

One mosquito bite the entire trip. Until we were outside waiting for SuperShuttle. Then I got 4 fire ant bites!. Traveling time was 10.5 hours. Should have taken Monday off.

Everyone watched then video from the trip before heading off to bed.

17 March 2007 (Saturday)

Breakfast @ Ruby's. Kids and I ate on the porch at the back. Took Michelle back a cinnamon roll. D almost feed it to a stray dog!. Chilled out in the room until 10:45 then decided to goto Caye Caulker. Very short trip. Nice little ride.

Caye Caulker is almost just like San Pedro was 20 years ago. Sand streets. Slower pace. Very quite.

Had lunch at Bamboo's. The person working looked very young (16?). Seemed to have an engagement ring on her finger. Maybe the owner's daughter? Owner wore a DEA hat. Got a good laugh with that. It seemed he lived right behind the place. Very convenient.

Walked around and checked out the tide pools. Kids saw a bunch of small crabs, (hermit, etc). shrimp. Walked to the North Cut (created by a hurricane in 2000). Beautiful spot. Funky little boat and bar at the end. Abandon hotel smelled of human waster (blech!).

While waiting for the water taxi saw 4 conch shells. 1 still had something living in it. D picked one for her teacher. By the end of the night it smelled BAD. Still has something (not sure) in it.

On the way back on the water taxi some guy was complaining about the trip to San Pedro and the general slowness of everything.

Last night :( Had dinner at hotel. Walked down to a place for the cigars. Had a beer and a taste of a coffee liqueur. Walked around a bit to savour the last night.

16 March 2007 (Friday)

Did some shopping. Got some souvenirs.  Took some video around San Pedro. Then spent the rest of the morning at the pool. After lunch went to Protech to pickup CDs of UW pictures I took. Alex was there and bought me a beer. Got some great info on the local live.

Dinner at Elvi's.  Mayan food. Pretty good.

15 March 2007 (Thursday)

D was 'tired' so we did not dive. Turns out she was worried about the current. I had mentioned to Michelle about it and she took it pretty tough. We thought it was the backflip. Got it reschedules for the afternoon. Mentioned D's apprehensions to Anna at the shop. Picked up the UW camera for the dive.

Walked around and found the geocache! It was in a shop on the pier. Ran into a guy who also lived in Los Fresnos!!! We knew the same people! What a small world. Turns out Los Fresnos still still getting speeders into South Padre right outside of town. Found 2 conch shells next to the sea wall by the cemetary. Jumped in and picked them up. D & Q were thrilled.

Hung out at pool for awhile decided to take a short nap while kids and Michelle at pool.

Boat picked us up at the pier around 1:45. Israel our DM. One guy on the dive an expert diver (on his way to instructor). Israel had us get our gear on in the water (Anna?). During trip out I talked about San Pedro 20 years ago. Israel filled in some of the things I could not remember.

I was able to stay on the boat and film D in the water while the guy helped D get gear on. The diver had a slate so we could write the messages 'Hi Mom' and 'Hi Ms T.R.' (writing underwater is surprising hard). Not sure how to erase those slates. We (Anna, Israel?) timed the dive exactly when the current was switching from in to out. So we would be against the current for a few seconds, then with the current.  The son (14?) of a Dad/Son dive pair seemed to have some problems clearing his mask/equalizing. So we stopped on the bottom for about 10 minutes. D took the time to try and catch the fish by hand. She was smart enough to not move around much and wait for them to get close before trying. Saw a shark and a bunch of eels. A spotted one chased off the DM as he swam by.

We snorkeled this time. The DM told us that the sharks would leave as soon as he stopped chumming the water. So D jumped into the water next to the sharks as soon as he said that!.

Had dinner at Carumba's. Nice place. VERY loud (low ceiling, no windows).  Q could not get out of the bathroom (hands too wet to turn the knob). No one could hear her call for help. She eventually got out when her hands got dry. Very traumatic.

14 March 2007 (Wednesday)

Cart Day!

Had breakfast @ hotel, HUGE! servings.

As I had feared it was a Seinfeld moment. No cart! Waited about 30 minutes for them to get one out of the shop. First stop was a the bank and got some money off CC.

Drove North. The bridge over the cut is pretty cool. I swear the guy taking the tickets is the same guy that was working the boat 20 years ago! The trail is pretty rough in spots. Pretty cool driving thru parts of  the jungly stuff. Lots of iguanas. Got stopped by some German(?) woman who was stopping all the tourists along the road sellings jewelry. Everyone got some thing. There was a nice little resort that had a red/brown paint to it. The North road cut right thru it. The rooms were on teh west side of the road and the pool, etc on the east side. Need to find out the name. Maybe stay there next time.

Got to the first Geocache! Everyone else thought I was crazy for doing it until we found someone else at the first stop (Virginia). When D found the cache it was a huge "This is cool" moment. Did not take, but left a $1 belize in it. I had forgotten the horses I was going to leave.

Beautiful stretches of beach on the rest of the journey north. We would have to switch back from jungle to beach to jungle as people prevented carts from the beach (understandable). The stretches along the beach we nice cool and breezy. The jungle, hot and humid. Road got MUCH rougher.

The next cache at the 18th parallel. Looks like another little place to stay right there. Might stay there.  We looked for about 10 min and were about to give up when other geocacher arrived. The girls were getting hot and hungry. Michelle found this one. What made it hard was that there was lots of trash in the area making it more difficult to separate the wheat and chaff.

Michelle drove back. Went down the wrong path 2x. Saw one home that was very nice. Looked like teak window frames.

On the south side of bridge stopped and purchase some brightly painted wall hanging nicknacks. Picked up some subs at Hungry Monkey (next to Mickey's).

Late after lunch cleaned up and went South. Got reservations at Victoria House. Saw some crocs in a bay on the west side of island. got some pictures. Tried to find cache in area. It seemed to be at the end of a pier.

The dinner at Victoria House was incredible. Michelle had grilled grouper and I had a tenderloin. W had a cheese quesidilla that was probably the best I have everm tasted.  Glad we did not stay there. The girls would have been bored as it is so tranquil.

After dinner stopped off at Island Super Market. Tried to explain to Michelle the prices were too high. But she did not seem to care. Turns out the Diet Cokes we purchased were expired. I wisely did not laugh.

13 March (Tuesday)

Had breakfast at Ruby's again.

Bit of confusion. I thought I was told to be picked-up in front of the hotel. But to be picked up at dock (duh!). Got picked-up @ 9:15. Protech has boat problems so we dove with Ambergris Dive. We got our regulators from Protech. As I had instructed they had one that was leak free for D. Very appreciative of that.

Russell was the DM. Pretty good DM. His interaction with the divers is very dry and a bit abrupt. His interaction with the other people on other boats is very congenial.  He could tell that D was having a problem with her first back flip into the ocean (as most people do). So he was nice enough (and strong enough) to pick her up and set her into the water.

The dive was excellent. Lots of Marine life. MUCH more than 20 years ago. TONS of sting rays. Couple of eels (a baby one). We swam against the current getting back to the boat. It was tough. D just does not have the leg power to make good progress against a current. I had to tow her behind me to get to the boat. I was exhausted by the time I got to the boat. Compounding the problem was that I was working hard so my air was running out quick, making me positively buoyant. So I could not get down to the bottom to avoid some of the current. So I had to work harder, therefore using more air. Too exhausted to snorkel at Shark and Sting-Ray alley.

I think D got a little worried about snorkeling. One of the snorkelers at the first stop got stung on her thigh and breast from a man-o-war. They did not have any windex or vinegar or ammonia to counter act. I told her "I would help you, but I do not have to pee." Others laughed, she did not find the humor in it :) Got back around 11:30. After all the shit Michelle gave me about the walkie talkies  and calling her ASAP when we got out. She had the (*#*(&$ thing turned off!

Had lunch at Mickey's (?). Nice small sit down place. The girls has HUGE hamburgers. Should have ordered one and split it between them. Get French Fries!.

After lunch walked around downtown and checked out some street vendors. Girls REALLY wanted some conch shells. Told them no as we would get our own (kids very unhappy, not believing us). Walked to Super Buy with the girls and bought lots of stuff.  Stopped off at the library and dropped off the books. The MB person (libraygrl?) was very appreciative.

Back to the hotel and spent the afternoon @ pool while Michelle in class.

Dinner @ hotel (sushi night!).

12 Mar 2007 (Monday)

Ate breakfast at Ruby's. Fresh OJ, homemade donuts (regular and chocolate) and cinnamon rolls. The cinnamon rolls were some of the best I have ever had. Walked thru a couple of shops, prices not too bad.

They are working on the street. We walked right by them as they worked. It was not blocked off at all. Today is a public and Government holiday so some things are closed.

Tried to get a cart for Wednesday @ Ultimate Carts and they were out. They sent me to island adventures. Took my name, but not much else for the reservation. A bit concerned that I'm about to have a Seinfeld moment of taking versus holding the reservation.

Went to Protech. Stopped off at Ramon's and found Turiano. He did not remember me (not surprising). But it was nice to say hello and compliment him on his DM. Scheduled a dive for Tuesday with Protech. Forgot the mention the UW camera :(.  Found an internet cafe and sent Damon an IM, he was already at lunch so sent an email. Met Alex at the hotel!@ 10:30 and give him his stuff.

Had lunch in the room.

After which I rented a bike and rode to Super Buy (where the locals get groceries). Got lost...way lost. But found it and my way back.

Took the girls to Ramon's for them to play on the beach. They played around for about an hour and half. They figured out that salt water tastes pretty nasty. After which back to the hotel for showers (kid were tired). I took a nap while the girls played around in the room and watched TV. Michelle got back around 6pm.

We went to the vet reception at 6:30-7:30 (open bar). Not much kid friendly food so we got dinner from the hotel restaurant and ate it in the room.

11 Mar 2007 (Sunday)

Not too bad of a journey.  Left the house @ 8:45am with SuperShuttle.

At the Airport:

Checked in at American Airlines with the electronic check-in. Got thru very quickly. I liked the way it read the data on the page of your passport to get your data and check you in. The line for security sucked. They had 2 lines that merged into 1 for the X Ray/metal detector. It took forever. The wait for the plane was long. We waited about 2 hours. The kids did pretty good.

Flight:

The flight was 2.5 hours it seemed pretty quick. Night at the Museum played. The kids loved it.

Arriving in Belize:

Immigration SUCKED. Huge slow moving lines. We ended up at the very end of the line because of the way they kept splitting up the existing line (taking from back to populate the new lines). Did not have to pay any duty on the books, hardrive, memory that I brought into the country. Our driver was excellent  (Jason). We beat all the others to the water taxi even though we left significantly after them.

To San Pedro:

The trip on the boat seemed to take forever. Q fell asleep and D was almost out. One little girl at the front of the boat got seasick right at the start but was fine after that. The toughest part of the trip was dragging our luggage thru the sand to the hotel. I really sucked after the long journey. Hot and Humid and tired :(

Dinner was at the hotel-The Sunbreeze- (it was ok). We walked down to Ramon's the back downtown. Downtown we bought some Diet Cokes, yogurt, peanut butter (not Jif) and bread $21.

The Myth about drunk driving.

Because Kent told me to. Here is a post detailing our discussion about drunk driving. The rest of the discussion will be in comments.

Not sure how you would have to measure prohibition for it to be a success.

• More deaths attributed to alcohol during prohibition than before and after
• More alcoholics during prohibition than before and after
• More violence during prohibition than before and after.
• Massive criminal enterprises corrupting law enforcement and our legal system.

[Kent] Zig has data the other way--except it did encourage some gangs.

[Lee] Zig is wrong.  VERY wrong. It is illegal to be drunk and drive, not to drink and drive (as much as MADD would disagree with me).

[Kent] Yes, I know that. But here is the chain: most people who go to a bar drink, the designated driver is a myth, most people who drink , then drive 5 minutes later are over the limit. Besides, if you want to find drunk people, look for them there----or you will find them crashed into the back of a car stalled on the side of the road--I am getting really tired of those.

You are correct; they are not serious about stopping drunk driving. The DUI industry would lose money if they did. Accidents attributed to alcohol have been relatively constant for years (even as we lower the BAC limits). Yet every year you hear MADD talk about the crisis is getting worse and that we need to lower the BAC limit. The ARRESTS are increasing every year.

[Kent] Madd needs your money--there are two kinds of members: true believers, and those making it into a career (same with the American Cancer Society by the way)

Our current DUI laws are punishing the wrong offenders. By far most accidents are caused by those that have a blood alcohol content at or above .15 yet most states are at .08 and some are pushing to a lower limit (I seem to have lost the link to the study of accidents in CA regarding this). This does nothing but turn what should be a public safety issue into a money making enterprise for the government. Also look at WHO is causing the accidents, by far it is repeat offenders. But if we actually target the people causing the problem then there would be less money.

[Kent] You have a point in the same as we discussed yesterday. If we lower the limit to .00000000001 who will it affect. Not the really drunk because they are already over the limit. Prosecutors and judges (Craig Watkins and his gang feel sorry for the DUI repeats because they need to get to their jobs.