Surprisingly enough, we see quite a few celebrities in our sleepy little town of Rincon, PR. Around Christmas time last year Vanessa Williams and Rick Fox were seen taking a ride on the “Pintos R Us” horses at sunset and Glenn Close was spotted enjoying a meal with family at The Lazy Parrot/Smilin’ Joes.
Currently, presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both in Puerto Rico for the 2008 Democratic primaries. While Barack is in San Juan, working. Hillary is kicking back at The Horned Dorset in Rincon. Sounds like someone is on vacation…
Here is a video of Hillary Clinton at a local Puerto Rican bar, sucking down a Presidente beer and doing a little dance to Enrique Iglesias “Just Wanna be with You”:
Can anyone of you locals guess what bar Hillary was at? The video was taken at a bar in San Juan.
I took a drive today in the Bronco (aka: The Donkey, The Bulldozer, The Windowless Wonder) and ended up stopping by a buddies house. I wasn’t there for ten minutes before the rain started coming down. I hung out with him, his girl and their son for about an hour before I decided to brave the wet seats of the Bronco and head back to the house. I completely forgot that our windshield wipers stopped working during the last rain storm until they swept back and forth twice, then stopped forever (at least that is my guess).
It’s funny, you forget how important windshield wipers are in the tropics during dry season, then the rainy season hits and you say; “oh yeah, those things are important!”
It was really raining hard on the way home and I was driving slow…it was very difficult to see the road, I felt like I was wearing glasses that were the wrong prescription…so I decided to reach into my pocket and pull out my camera…go figure. At the end of the video you can see one of the trenches I dug to help divert the water away from the landing at the bottom of the hill. The ditch looked like a little stream and waterfall but our landing was still a giant pool of mud and silt. Oh well, at least it started to work.
Spring time is definitely upon us here in Rincon. For the past week we have had our fair share of rain and warm weather. The plants in the yard are absolutely loving the daily soaking, Summer and I are loving how much easier it is to work the soil when it is wet/moist and all of the animals in town are showboating their new offspring.
Everywhere we go there are cute baby animals checking us out, running away from us or just plain old ignoring us. Here are a few cute pics of the baby animals of Rincon:
Baby Cows remind me of Mini Donkeys Two Baby Goats and Momma - Entertainment at its best Little Nitro the puppy is a new addition to Turbo’s family Baby Horse and Momma - Alive and Kicking!
Funny thing about the baby horse…well, more funny lesson that I learned about baby horses. They sleep lying down. I know, I know. Of course they sleep lying down, right? Well, I didn’t grow up on a farm or around horses and I didn’t know that. A couple weeks ago, before it started raining and it was as dry as it gets here in Rincon, I drove by this pasture with the baby horse and noticed the two adult horses nudging the baby horse (which was lying down). The baby wasn’t moving! I stopped the car and got out to take a close look. I tried to see if the baby was breathing from a distance and couldn’t tell. I immediately thought the worst and decided that the baby horse didn’t make it through his/her first couple of weeks of life. I was devastated. I called my buddy Mark to see if he knew who’s horses they were and that i thought the baby had died and then I talked to Julie (Rincon Cowgirl Extraordinaire). She said I was the third person to contact her about the baby and assured me that it was just fine. Baby horses need sleep she told me, and they sleep lying down.
Summer and I headed out to Mayaguez yesterday to get a bunch of errands done. We went to Marshals and Sams Club (total trip time: Marshals + Sams Club = Five Hours). The traffic wasn’t too bad, but we got caught at the same section of lights out by the Denny’s. Traffic would cruise through there so much more smooth if they timed the lights better. The way the lights are timed, there is always a jam.
We went to Marshals looking for a mirror to hang in the great room upstairs and to see if there was any other stuff we couldn’t do without. We didn’t find a mirror, but we found a bunch of other really cool stuff…some of it came home with us (towels, candle holders, wood bowl, laundry basket, Sierra Nevada Spicy Mustard), some of it didn’t (retro Nike sneakers, lap top bag, giant pepper grinder).
Check out this GIANT Pepper Grinder that they had in the Culinary section. Are you kidding me? This thing must break a world record. I would need to build a new pantry just to house this thing! Yeah, so this didn’t go home with us.
I pulled these two vines out of one of our planters and with them came these strange bulbous roots. I’ve seen similar growths all over our property and have always wondered…que es eso?!
What are these things?! Is it a potato? that is exactly what it looks like when I cut them open, but potatoes don’t grow vines do they? I thought they grew bushy plants…
Any ideas what these things are? Animal, vegetable, mineral?
Can it be? Is Rincon really getting a Health Food store? Well, you know how it goes in a small town, rumor has it that the owners over at Fresh Mart in Aguadilla are opening up a similar store here in Rincon. Usually, when I hear that kind of talk, I wait until I see it to believe it because there is always all kinds of talk going around small towns about all the great new things on the way…and often times they never get here.
Yesterday, Summer and I drove past the old furniture store on the 115 (next to the Western Bank Financed construction project) and I am now a believer. I noticed some construction going on in the building the past couple of days (guys moving block and mixing concrete) and yesterday we saw the Fresh Mart crew walking around the inside.
X Marks the Spot for Healthy Shopping
Summer and I are stoked! It would be great to have a natural foods store in Rincon. The Fresh Mart in Aguadilla also has very healthy prepared meals that they server daily. Oooooh, I am so excited. Does anyone have any more information on this deal?
I surfed this morning with one friend of mine (we didn’t arrange the surf, we were both at the same place and same time) some pretty good waves. There is a solid North North West Swell pushing towards Puerto Rico at about 7ft at 13 seconds. The sets were a couple feet overhead, oil slick glass and lined up for 200 yards if you chose the right wave and surfed fast enough. We were out alone for about an hour and a half before 6 other people came paddled out to join in the phone. The waves were good, all of the seasonal surfers are outta here and we scored with just a few people out!
I paddled out at 6:00am sharp after making coffee, loading up the back of the Tacoma with trash and driving it up to our designated trash area (today is trash day) and waxing up my board after its recent visit to the ding doctor. I got out of the water at 9:30 exhausted an already thinking about work. I have a lot to do this morning and have afternoon meetings lined up until 5:30 (1.5 hours of surf before dark). After about 3.5 hours of very productive computer time (10 minutes ago), I decided that I wanted to take a 45 minute break, grab Summer and check the surf via a nice walk on the beach (working on the Internet in a home office has its advantages to my lifestyle, I can’t surf at night but I can work on the web!).
Sounds pretty good right? There is only one problem. I can’t find Summer! Both of our trucks are here, the dogs are kickin’ it in the back yard and my walk through of the house yelling her name like a little kid didn’t produce my girlfriend! Man, this house is so much bigger than we thought when we bought it. We laughed at the idea of a home intercom system when it was suggested to us, but with all the fans on and pure magnitude of our house, it’s just plain old difficult to find each other sometimes.
We were landscaping our backyard and planted these two palm trees that will eventually be where my hammock goes. Since it’s going to be a couple of years until they are strong enough to support a hammock, I decided to plant a garden in between them for now:
I dug out the rock/dirt and replaced it with a mix of better quality soil. I ordered all sort of interesting seeds from seedsofchange.com and decided to plant spicy mesculin mix (a lettuce assortment), scallions, tigrella heirloom tomatoes, black krim heirloom tomatoes, purple bell peppers and edamame (soy beans).
48 hours after planting the seeds, I saw sprouts!
Here is the garden on day 5:
The scallions, heirloom tomatoes and purple bell peppers also have tiny sprouts, so they are growing well too. I was wondering if the heirlooms would grow since the package of seeds had all sorts of advanced directions that I ignored in favor of throwing them into the dirt and hoping that they would grow…
Yesterday we continued with our Tuesday bowling night (6pm) in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. Tons of friends from Rincon showed up and we got our bowl on.
We are thinking about starting a bowling league, but what if we are the only league in Puerto Rico? Then who do we bowl against? I guess we’ll have to start two leagues so we have someone to compete against?
Two things about the bowling alley in Aguadilla:
1. Don’t bowl on lane 18. The air conditioning misses you entirely.
2. Don’t drink the rum and Cokes unless you want to get really, really, really drunk.
More Rinconians getting their bowl on:
Looks like a strike for Stefan…
Summer bowled a 151, beating Noel by 1:
Stefan bowled a 169! Unfortunately Luis bowled a 170 for the win:
The daily rain still hasn’t begun, but we have had a few great downpours in the afternoon that our plants love! Every time the rain comes, I am reminded of how slippery and muddy our unpaved driveway gets. Five out of ten times leaving the driveway when it is raining, Summer and I have to engage four-wheel drive. I don’t really mind it too much, but it sure is awkward when friends come over and can’t pull into our driveway. Instead, they are forced to carefully walk down our slippery slide of a driveway. It can’t be done without getting your shoes covered in mud (unless you are a ninja of course).
This is not our driveway getting paved, but it could be!
One of our friends down here that we play poker with (he has been forced to walk the driveway) offered to go down to city hall and talk to the mayor about paving our driveway with us. Everyone in our neighborhood understands that we haven’t been able to pave the driveway, but they are sick of our mud tracks and splatters all over the first 500 feet of the road. So, with that said, it is also an election year and everyone in our neighborhood (including me) will be voting for a Mayor in November. In essence, with the power of our vote alone, we are going to try to get the city to pave our driveway.
Yesterday we continued with our Tuesday bowling night (6pm) in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. Tons of friends from Rincon showed up and we got our bowl on.
