Island style or why I haven't posted, yes I'm still among the living . . .

This morning, (Sun. June 16 - just in case I don't finish this today) I woke up and said, 'I gotta get the blog out today'. It's been a while, I know. No, I did not fall off the earth, yes, I am still among the living, yes and no to all other similar inquiries. I finally realized why I haven't got around to it before now. Distractions and island style. Distractions come very easy around here. Take this morning. I got up and got ready to go to breakfast. No sunglasses. Even with a ball cap, it's difficult, uncomfortable, probably down right unhealthy to venture out lacking eye protection. Where did I leave my shades? Then I remembered, which is becoming more and more of a rarity. I took them off while I was golfing yesterday evening. They were still in my golf bag. I'd have to make a trip to the golf course. Luckily I had my company issued safety sunglasses. So I rode over to the Cafe Pacific, our company dining hall, for breakfast. Food here can't compare to Antarctica. Those of you with military experience would recognize it as mess hall chow and even that may be gilding the lily. However, there is always plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. There are heaping piles of cut up melon, honeydew, cantaloupe and watermelon, at every meal. That's always half my breakfast. But I digress - distractions, know what I mean? After breakfast I was about to head for the golf course but decided to swing by my room to pick up a wrench to adjust the handlebars on my bike. Last week I came across a set of highrise handlebars someone threw away. Macy's West has been out of them since I got my bike. These were a tad rusty, but the rusty part was easily covered with some black foam. With the high rise, you don't have to lean over when riding. Some folks go so far as to extend the handlebar rod from the front forks up for a couple feet, then weld on a cross piece. Looks something like a perch for a bird. Except these 'birds' ride around with their arms crossed, leaning on the cross bar. Relaxed. Around here they call it 'island style'. One of the crew will say he has to run - 'run' being purely a figure of speech - he has to run to the bank, shop, etc. at break time. We take a 15 minute break at 9:30 AM and 2:30 PM. It is not unusual for the break to begin at 25 after the hour. If that crew member 'runs' to wherever, with the vehicle, and makes it back by 10 to the hour, that's about standard. Island style. Where was I? . . . Distracted again . . .oh yeah, so I got the wrench, adjusted the handlebars out just a tad and headed for Holmberg Fairways. Not too fast, you understand. Except a couple stretches along either side of the runway, the speed limit is 15 mph. I doubt I can go 15 unless I'm heading south or west. Once or twice heading in those directions I've been able to coast with the wind. The prevailing winds are out of the north and east. Travelling in those directions, I'm generally in 2nd or even 1st gear and giving it all I've got just to make headway. Plus it was Sunday morning and there are Sunday drivers, bicyclists out here. And the road follows the shoreline with great views of the waves crashing. Anyway I got my sunglasses, made another slight handlebar adjustment and headed back - but not before stopping for a cup of real coffee. On days off I may make myself some coffee, grind beans and make up a coffee press full. However, today I knew I needed to save time and get back here to this blog. Therefore I went by the bakery. As luck would have it, a woman and her young son were picking out doughnuts. I don't even pretend to understand Marshallese, but I think the woman customer and the woman behind the counter, the only one working this morning, were catching up on all the latest gossip while the young boy was making his very carefully thought out selections. Island style. With all this time on my hands, I spent too much time examining the baked goods on display. I left with a coffee AND a raspberry sweet roll. That will require a trip to the gym. It occurs to me I haven't made it to the gym since about Tues. when I should be going every other day. (Okay, I should be going twice a day, but let's be realistic here - still, what have I been doing after work? Lets see, gym Tues., skipped Wed., put new handlebars on Thurs., diving Fri., golf yesterday. Okay - that explains it . . .) And that's another thing. Diving. When I first got here, virtually everyone said, "You have to dive." Not a question if I wanted to or if I knew how. A statement, "You have to dive." It seems that, if you don't dive, you have no business being on Kwaj. It's the reason most of these folks come here to work. It sure ain't the pay! About a month ago I startred scuba diving classes. Never knew there was so much reading. AND videos. AND classes. And naturally a couple sessions in the pool. Plus two walk-in dives up at Emon beach. Just walk in, swim out and then scuba down to about 40+ feet and check things out. The best was the final dive for our open water certification. We took a boat to the ocean side of the reef and anchored. Went over the side and swam down a sand channel to the wall of the reef. A sand channel is like a gully or small canyon leading from the top of the reef to the side, the wall, that drops away to the ocean bottom. It think they said it's about 1,000 meters deep - the bottom, that is. And the wall isn't vertical. It's a steep, coral covered slope, teeming with fish. Everything I had seen snorkeling and then some. The deepest I went was about 60 feet, the limit for this level of certification. I plan on taking the next available class for advanced, which while enable me to dive to 130 feet, which in turn will enable me to examine some of the many wrecks, planes and ships, from the WW II battles around here. Again, I degress - distractions. There was a shark checking us out when we first got down the channel to the wall. Maybe it was a finicky eater. Maybe we weren't appetizing enough. Maybe it knew what WE feed on and preferred not to eat the same. From what I'm told, in all the years that people have been diving here there have only been a couple shark bites. Seems in those two or three occurrences, someone was being stupid, poking a shark or spearfishing around them. Anyway, after the shark, a manta ray, about 5 feet across the front 'horns', the tips out in front, cruised by to check us out, first in one direction above us, and then returned below us. Gave us a really good look at a really beautiful creature. Soon after, smaller eagle rays, five of them, came by doing some underwater precision acrobatics (aqua-batics?), all moving in unison, almost in slow motion. Followed shortly thereafter by a group of white tip sharks - like me, they eat shellfish. The instructor said we were going to be spoiled because people go on a lot of dives before they see all those different creatures, let alone all on one dive. And when one of the above wasn't around, there were hundreds and hundreds of dozens and dozens of varieties of fish. That was before we got back in the boat and moved down the reef for another dive. On the way, a group of dolphins showed up and swam parallel to the boat for a ways. The second dive only added a couple giant clams and a Napoleon wrasse. So it's not that I haven't intended to get this out. Distractions, you see. Now I gotta go. I'm going up the lagoon with some people to dive around an island that is supposed to be REALLY good for seeing fish. That's about 2 hours from now and I need to get my gear packed - but, no hurry, island style . . .