California 2 Puerto Rico

After speaking with Gino (who is helping with the shower pan and the tile) he indicated that if the river rock we want to use in the bathroom is carried into the shower, it could pool water in the cracks between the rocks and not be the most practical thing to use.

With that said, I went to Paradise Tile in Aguada this morning to look for an alternative. I found a really cool rock, but it is pretty expensive. I also found the tile/rock that we liked from Home Depot and it cost about a dollar more per 12” section. This tells me we will have to pay for a better selection. What do you think about the new flat river rock I found?

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I went back to California for a couple of days to see Summer and help pack up stuff. We decided a couple of weeks ago that spending four thousand dollars for a container to ship our stuff to Puerto Rico was too much money because we didn’t have much big stuff worth sending.

Once I got back to Carlsbad, I realized that I had much more stuff that I wanted to keep than I thought. Summer and I decided to give away, donate or sell everything that wasn’t important to us. After going through all my stuff on the first round, there wasn’t much I was willing to part with. After a couple more reviews of my stuff, I narrowed it down big time and reluctantly left a bunch of stuff behind (New Yamaha tuner, stereo, camping stuff, French Presses, tools and much more).

I still packed a lot of stuff and realized it was going to cost us just as much shipping it via USPS so I called JetBlue and found out their excessive baggage policy. Anything over 2 bags is a $50 charge and they allow up to 100 pounds per bag. So, with that said, I packed up 5 bags with 90 pounds worth of stuff, packed one bike box (with my mountain bike, I left my classic American made Schwinn cruiser ), packed two sets of golf clubs, packed 9 surfboards in two board bags and packed up my computers in a giant box with bubble wrap, peanuts and taped up the box.

French Presses that were left behind (I’m sorry)

Classic Mark Richards twin fin from the 70’s

Preventative Measures while packing the computers



Jet Blue Baggage Pick-up in Aguadilla

The hardest part of the day was arriving in Aguadilla at 4:15 am and having to get all of this stuff to my truck (which was in the parking lot because Mark and Jerry dropped it off for me earlier in the day). By the time I packed it all up and got to the house, the sun was up (6:00am) and I was up for the day. It was a rough one..but all the “big stuff” is here except for the Snowboards and Summers computers.

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Stefan and I have been flying back and forth from California to Puerto Rico A LOT lately, so we are becoming quite air saavy. As a matter of fact, Stefan is on a Jet Blue flight back to Puerto Rico right now. We prefer to fly into Aguadilla because it is the closest airport to Rincon, which is where we live. The San Juan airport is the most popular airport to fly into Puerto Rico, but unless you are planning on staying in, or near, San Juan, it sucks to fly in there because the traffic in Puerto Rico SUCKS. Here is a list of airlines that currently fly from San Diego, CA to Aguadilla, PR:

~ Jet Blue (layover in New York)
~ Delta (layover in New Jersey)
~ Continental (layover in New York)
~ Northwest (layover in Minnesota and New Jersey)
~ Spirit Airlines (layover in Ft. Lauderdale)

Jet Blue has the cheapest flights which I have been scoring for $189 each way.

I will update this list as I find more airlines that fly from San Diego, CA to the airport in Aguadilla, PR.

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I do essentially ALL of my shopping online, so I’m going to start compiling a list of websites that ship to Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, most websites that I’ve happened upon do not, but these are the websites that I have so far:

LinensnThings.com - Bedding and home items.

Faucet.com - A great store if you’re building a house. They ship to PR, but not to P.O. boxes.

Ulta.com - A beauty supply store.

Zappos.com - The webs biggest shoe store (plus sunglasses, clothing and more).

PetEdge.com - A huge selection of pet supplies.

Target.com - Target ships some items to Puerto Rico. Although they say they don’t ship to a P.O. box and then sent some of our order USPS.

LaLaLingerie.com - Womens clothing and accessories.

ViciousStyle.com - Belts, belt buckles, clothing and accessories.

WilsonsLeather.com - Leather clothing, purses and accessories.

Delias.com - Womens/teen clothing, shoes and accessories.

Cooking.com - Just about everything you could need for the kitchen.

Organize.com - Organizing solutions for the home and office.

TheSpiceHouse.com - Merchants of exquisite spices, herbs and seasonings.

SolutionAccessories.com - Changing towels and terrycloth seat covers.

OfficeMax.com - Not only does Office Max deliver to Puerto Rico, orders over $50 are delivered for free.

I will be adding more websites that ship to Puerto Rico, as I happen upon them.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Summer and I walked Kuta and Monkey to the Vets office yesterday and got their check ups. They are both healthy and got certified to fly to Puerto Rico! Monkey was caught up on her shots already (Rabies is the only required one) so for the great price of $110 we got her health certification and she is ready to travel. Kuta had to get a rabies shot (which was scary because of his past neurological problems) but he is doing just fine and is ready to hit up Puerto Rico…short haircut and all!

Now, I need to hurry up and enclose the property so Monkey and Kuta don’t go hunting prize roosters that battle it out for big bucks at Puerto Rico’s traditional Cock Fighting. Our neighbor owns a half a dozen of the prized birds and is the caretaker for about 20 more.

We are going to fly them down on Continentals program and will hopefully have them there this weekend or early next week.

Did I mention that we have almost three acres? That’s is a lot of time with the machete weed whacking and a lot of fencing to put up. At least it’s not hot down there this time of the year.

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I got the video walk through from July 2nd uploaded and working. Check it out here:

PR House Walk Through

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Yesterday Stefan and I headed over to the Home Depot Expo and we picked out the shower hardware for the master bathroom. We picked out some nice Graff brand shower set ups, but today I decided that I didn’t like them enough to spend $600 on them (this picking out fixtures thing is harder then it looks!).

SO, we went online today and ended up choosing the Kohler Memoirs Rite-Temp Shower Faucet Trim w/ Classic Design & Cross Handle, shown here in brushed nickle. We had to purchase two shower set ups, since the master bath has a double shower head. Building a house is muy caro (very expensive)! The two shower set ups cost us $522 (Normally it would have been $575, but I got 10% off at AbsoluteHome.com). Which isn’t horribly bad, but it’s starting to add up.

We also found the sinks we want to use in the master bath as well:

I was just kidding about the god-awful gold sink above. Here are the Kohler sinks we are really going to use in the master bathroom :):

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I am taking Kuta and Monkey to the vet today at 4:20pm to get their health certification. They will need this to travel to Puerto Rico.

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I have been home for a few days now and don’t feel like I have gotten much accomplished. Since we decided not to get a container, I am sorting through everything I have left here (i haven’t even gotten to the shed yet) and donating clothes to good will, picking and choosing which surfboards are going/staying. I packed the surfboards that are going (9) this morning and am trying to figure out if I should move to my office, or the shed. I really don’t want to do any of it.

Summer is going to order boxes today that we will use to ship the bikes and computers/monitors.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Driving around Puerto Rico that last couple of weeks looking for building supplies for the house I noticed a few things that made me say “hmmmm.”

1. Tsunami evacuation route signs in all of the low areas around Mayaguez
2. Houses on thin little stilts that don’t seem very earthquake proof

With that said, i was just doing some research online about tsunami’s in Puerto Rico (we are high enough that we wouldn’t get hit even if an Indonesia like tsunami came through) and found out that the last big one hit in 1918. It was a medium sized wave that did about $4 million dollars in damage top the West Side of Puerto Rico and was caused by an earthquake in the Mona Trench (deepest spot in the entire Atlantic Ocean and one of the largest fault lines on the East coast) with a magnitude of 7.5

That answers my questions…yep, they have been hit by tsunamis and they do get earthquakes.

Popularity: 3% [?]