Golden Chalice

There was a great treasure find on Tuesday that I wanted to share with you. No Tom didn't find it but it is still really cool! It is a gold chalice that is in amazing shape. Tom was there when they brought it on shore and said it is an amazing site to see. I wanted to include a picture but couldn't get one to load so here is the link to the MF site with more story and pictures.
http://www.melfisher.com/SalvageOperations/RecentFinds/GoldChalice_0608.asp

Here is also an update on Tom's work status.
The diver who was going to be leaving has decided to stay through the summer. So Tom has moved from the Stand By status to the Stand Down status. For now that is OK since Patti is arriving today for a 10 day visit (we are so excited) and he is glad to be around when she is. Then after she leaves he has been in discussion with MF as to what he can do next and he will continue to dive when there is room. He is now on Captn Chris's (the guy who takes the investors out to dive)standby call list so Chris lets Tom know where there is a opening. This has allowed Tom to dive 4 times in the last 2 weeks which is pretty good since we never know what the weather will bring.
When there is an update in the status I will let you know.

Caribbean Queen Junkanoos

So it is Wed afternoon and we were getting ready for our bi-weekly neighbor potluck and I hear the sounds of drums. I love this sound! It usually happens on the same Wed as our potlucks and many times we follow the sounds to a little park just a block from our house. There we will find a group of guys making the sounds. Not only is there a drum but all sorts of unusual instruments that create a very unique sound. Most of the instruments are home made and its fun to guess what they are made out of. It is the Junkanoos jamming! It is where a few of the band (old and current band members) that get together in the park to practice and jam. It is great to listen to!

Above is a picture of the band (this is not how they look on Wed) when they are practicing. The group is officially called the Caribbean Queen Junkanoos is an Afro-Caribbean processional band. They are a totally acoustical and portable and go anywhere! They have two Moko Jumbies (stilt walkers), and will stop and perform African dance wherever appropriate. When they perform (we have seen them a couple of times) it is like a conga line and you can join in. One of the things they are hired to play at is the funeral march to the cemetery. The Conchs (KW locals who can be buried there) hire them to celebrate the persons life. We have yet to see one of these but the locals say they are really cool.

Here is the history of the Junkanoo in case you are interested.......
Junkanoo is a celebratory parade with African roots which started in the Bahamas in the 17th century to preserve the African cultural traditions which were in danger of being lost in the displacement process of the slave trade. Spreading throughout the islands, Junkanoo is celebrated still, particularly in the Bahamas and Key West. Using traditional drums, cowbell, conch horn, and whistles, marchers attract a joyous crowd wherever they parade. In the 1600's, when Africans were being abducted and sold into slavery, a great number were brought into the Bahamas by ship. A Tribal Chieftain, who was given the English name of John Canoe, was instrumental in preserving the African culture. He was well thought of, and managed to persuade the owners to allow their slaves two days off a year to practice their traditions; Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) and New Year's Day. On these two days, celebratory processions were held, with brightly colored costumes and the African instruments of drums, horns, bells, and whistles. The Parades became associated with John Canoe, and the name changed to "Junkanoo" over the centuries. These traditions spread to the other island groups, each of which has its own special costume style. Junkanoo is still practiced today in many places, and Caribbean Queen Junkanoos is a composite of the best of the traditions.

Chickens

So had to share with you a picture of my chicken (actually it is a rooster). We picked it up when we were out walking and went browsing in one of the local shops. The greatest thing about it is that it crows!!!! It crows all by its self when you clap close to it or you move it.
Dyna is not sure about it. Everytime it crows she comes running to figure out 'What is this Thing?'
We are sure we will come home someday and find feathers all over the house.
It also crows on its own. If the bass is to loud on the TV it will set it off as it did when we were watching a movie or this afternoon when I sneezed and it started crowing.
So now I have my OWN chicken!

Pirate On Standby!

Tom got the 'call' today. There may be a diver position opening up!!!!

On the JB Magruder boat (there are 2 dive boats and this is the other one, not the one that Tom worked on it dry dock, that is the Dare) there are currently 5 divers and Captain Andy. One of the divers just got custody of his 16 year old daughter and may not be able to continue to work on the boat. Tom got a call today to see if he was still interested (of course he is!) and if he would be ready to join the crew if Bill won't be able to continue. Captain Andy is out of town till Thurs and Bill is working out his personal issues so it could be as soon as this Fri! So right now he is on standby and getting things together so he can be ready to go when he gets the 'call'.

Also an update on treasure diving. The weather has settled down and the boats have been out most of the time the last couple of weeks. Tom has been able to dive last Thursday, Saturday and will be out tomorrow (Tuesday).
Last Thursday it was him and a first time investor, Art, out for the day. On the second hole of the day Art found a coin. Yes, Art was out for his first dive and found a coin..... an 8 reale (an 8 reale is the largest of the silver Spanish coins). Boy was Tom mad! Not with Art since he is happy when treasure is found but mad that he wasn't the one to find it. Just not lucky enough on that side of the hole. I know that it won't be long till Tom finds his own coin.
When we were out of Sunday (I went along to spend the day on the boat) Art was diving again along with another investor and no one found anything. Hopefully tomorrow Tom will find something. If he does I will let you know.

I will let you know when Tom gets the 'call' and becomes a full time pirate..... what an Adventure!

Blog Ideas Wanted!

So when I started this months ago a had a list of topics that I wanted to write about or thought you would be interested in. That list has been completed so I am looking to all of you for input as to what you would like to hear about next. Please email me and let me know any ideas you may have on what hasn't been posted or updates that are needed or whatever.
Thanks!

drtnwtr@msn.com

KW Critters

So we thought we would share with you the wildlife of KW!

First we have never been anywhere that people love animals more than KW!!! As mentioned before there are a number of them just in our neighborhood and they are found EVERYWHERE!

Dogs - Lots and lots of dogs as you can imagine since there is a dog beach. We have seen all kinds. The other day a guy came by the house on a skate board and his dog was sitting on the front of the skate board just riding along. What a hoot! I wish had my camera for that one.

There are also a number of bars and restaurants that dogs are allowed at. Usually where there is an outdoor area you can bring your dog along. One of our favorite bars, Schooners Wharf usually has at least a few when we are there. We have even taken Dyna there and she loves it. Even our local fish market lets us bring Dyna in when we go to buy fresh fish. It is a great place since they get the fish from the local fisherman each day.

You can aways tell the locals from the tourists. The tourist will see Dyna sitting in the yard and move out of the way since they are afraid and think she is mean. The locals see her and come over to talk to her and pet her. She is convinced that everyone who comes down the street is there to talk with her.

Cats - There are probably more of them than any other animal. Of course there are the famous Hemingway cats that you can see at the Hemingway house that have 6 toes. The rest are here as pets and many are wild. We even had one that came with our house. Of course she can't come around since Dyna is here (and chases her every time she shows up). She has been with the house through 4 renters. There is also Linda a cat lady who lives a few houses down and puts food out all up an down the street to feed all of them. The Daily Neighbors even have a hurricane plan on who take which cats during a storm so none are left out.

Chickens and Roosters - They are the city bird and run wild. They are also everywhere! Of course this I love since now I have a real excuse to 'chase chickens'! We were at KMART in the garden center and found eggs that had been laid in a few of the plants. That was another big HOOT! Wasn't really expecting that one! The roosters are also confused on when to crow. It happens at all hours of the day and night. Lucky for us there aren't a lot of the roosters in our area. We do hear them at 3:00 am but since they aren't close they don't bother us. We have a friend that has them very close and he tells a story of chasing them down the street in his boxers due to crowing in the middle of the night.

I also have to share our own chicken story with you.....
Tom and I were walking Dyna the other day and approached a momma chicken who had chicks. Usually they squawk and move out of the way. For some reason the momma and the chicks felt trapped and rather then leave the momma decided to attack Dyna. Now Dyna usually ignores the chickens but since this one decided to attack she was NOT going to back down. She decided to attack back. So we started with Dyna on the left, Tom in the middle holding Dyna's leash and I was on the right. The momma went right so Dyna went right which was around both Tom and I. We didn't have enough time to react so the leash went around both of us. The momma continued around the back of us and so did Dyna. By this time we are all tangled up in the leash and doing everything we can to not fall over since we can't move our legs. It must have been a sight to see since I looked across the street and there was a group of tourists watching is all go on since it was quite noisy between the squawk of the chicken and Dyna's barking. We were finally able to get Dyna under control and momma allowed us to pass but continued to chase Dyna down the street trying to peck at her butt. We just couldn't stop laughing.

Birds - many people on the island have various exotic birds. They take them out in public all of the time and usually have them riding around on their shoulder. One local rides a Harley and has a large white Cockatoo that rides on his head. One of our neighbors has a love bird that makes all sorts of cooing each morning. Another one of our neighbors has a green parrot, Ricky, that we all refer to as 'the EVIL bird'. It likes NO ONE and attacks anyone who comes near it. The only person Ricky won't bite is his owner. More than one person has lost skin to the Evil bird.

Scorpions - VERY different than what we have in AZ. Here they are large, 2 -3 inches and are black in color. I saw one the other night walking down the sidewalk and COULDN'T BELIEVE the size of it. They are not very poisonous due to their size just scary since they are so big. Our bug man said that if we had any we would know it since you can hear them walk on the tile. YUK!!! Luckily with having Dyna we shouldn't have any in the house.

Ticks - we have also had our issues with ticks since the first week we arrived. Dyna dug a small hole in the yard and laid in it. Of course it was March and that is the height of tick season. From that experience we have been battling ticks but at least we are WINNING! We had to take the bark out of the back yard and have it replaced with rocks since that is here the ticks hang out. We also have had the yard and house sprayed to get rid of them.

Spiders - lucky for Tom there hasn't been a lot of them around the house. There is a very unusual one that we have a few of outside. It is something that we haven't seen before and resembles a crab. Of course they give Tom the creeps!

Termites - they are everywhere!!! We have them in the house and all of the locals just accept them as part of life. It freaked us out at first but now we just clean up wood droppings where ever we find them. We never use a dish out of the kitchen cupboards without checking it and cleaning it out. They are the worse in that room. They are so bad that a selling point for a house is to post when it was last tented and sprayed to get rid of them. It is not unusual for a house to be tented every 5 to 7 years to try and keep the little critters under control.

So hopefully this will give you an idea of the KW critters that we live with each day of the Adventure.

3 months of Adventure

So it has been 3 months since we left Arizona and started the Adventure..... yes, 3 months! Sometimes it feels like we left yesterday and other days it feels like we have been here forever. Tom and I have been talking about the last 3 months and we wanted to share with you a few thoughts about it all.

In thinking about our Adventure we realized we could just talk about it and never do it or finally just do it. We didn't want to be one of those people who just talked about it then cling to the usual: our jobs, daily life, and usual way of doing things. It would be easy to resist change and not step out of our comfort zone even though we had talked about it for years.
So as you know we finally decide to do it, ready for a new adventure, a new challenge. This has pushed us beyond what we knew, allowed us to make mistakes and learn from this life changing experience.

Tom and I decided we wanted to step out of our comfort zone many years ago when we visited the island of St John in the US Virgin Islands. The year was 1999. Since that time we have made many plans that would take us on the Adventure we dreamed of. Then we always let our lives drive the plan and continued to talk about it. There were so many things we needed to get done, Taryn through high school, then college, change in jobs for Myrla, wanting to have the 'right amount of money saved' and so on.

On my 46th birthday (Dec 2006) I told Tom that I would not be spending my 50th birthday in AZ. We weren't sure where we would go, when it would happen or how it would all come together but that we were ready to finally get things moving.

In May 2007 we put the house in FH up for sale. We wanted to downsize and simplify life. As we talked about what we wanted to do next it became clear we needed to stop talking about an Adventure and just so it. Then we talked about what we would do if we could live anywhere. Of course our first option was St John but that is out of the question due to the cost of living. Then we moved on to the other options in the places we had visited. Tom admitted that he would love to dive full time which led us to Mel Fisher, treasure salvage diving and Key West. Of course it would never be the right time or have the right amount of money or whatever had held us back in the past. We had to step out of our comfort zone and Just Do It!

Now we are here and loving it! We continue to step out of our comfort zone and make a new way of life. The lifestyle here is much different than we have known after 30 years in the desert. Different people, different weather, different landscape, different everything. We miss our family and friends VERY MUCH but have found the place where the different lifestyle is what we were looking for and where we feel we belong.