Life Transplanet

Don’t worry, we did spend some time at the beach too!

Well we had a list of things we wanted to do on this trip; some for fun, some for utility. Of course, we often put off the fun and do the work first, but I think we did pretty good overall.

Here were our goals: what we didn’t get to are in red, and what we accomplished are in green.

* Plant banana trees (BK)
* Visit with ARC ENG -the architecture/engineering business in Rincon (CK)
* Visit the Rincon Treehouse place to talk about specifics (BK)
* Visit Mangosteen person in Mayaguez if we have enough time (CK)
* CRIM? We haven’t done this yet and probably should (neither really want to)
* Fix up kitchenette to have running water (BK)
* Get estimate for cost of our property ideas by local contractor
* Get hot running water rigged if possible (CK)
* Buy a heavy duty weed-wacker at Home Depot, as the property is probably very overgrown by now (BK)
*Take a surf lesson – if we have time (CK)
* Have a small little fire at night on the property (BK) (A reminder to be careful what you wish for!!)
*Walk to the beach from property (CK)
* Get rest of bees removed from walls if possible (BK)
* Find closest hospital (just in case-ha) -CK
*Find thrift or 2nd hand stores in the area (CK)

So as you can see, we got quite a lot of the major items taken care of in the time we were there. In addition to these things we also:

*Found our trees that we had planted last time and cleared away the vines and growth from around them
*Weed-wacked the whole fenced area and a little beyond the fence line
*Met with a variety of friends in Rincon/Moca for dinners and poker
*Tried new restaurants
*Planted more sprouted coconut palms
*Planted our avocado pits from the Avocado Party (we’ll see what happens!)
*Found a nearby hardware store in Rincon with prices better than Home Depot and a discount day (10% off on Saturdays) for women!

We still haven’t quite made a decision one way or the other about the wood house. We go back and forth and forth and back, sometimes in the same conversation. There are so many pros and cons to either decision. Getting the bees out of the house really helped us feel more comfortable in it and around it. We could see more potential, and less of a desire to “just get rid of it”. Still not sure though. We would have a long way to go to make it feel like home. Next up for it will be bat removal!! Yikes.

I think we have a pretty decent plan to get the cabana very livable and then we can make our big decision on the wood house. It is definitely cool to have a wood house, as it makes it seem more like Hawaii-style housing: warm and inviting and less like concrete storm bunkers, but as we have seen with all the animals in the house it may be a little TOO inviting.  As you can tell we’re still in limbo on that one.

The wood house from the roof of the cabana

In addition to the bats and the bees, we also had some unexpected canine visitors on our last day there, but they were friendly:

Today is my birthday so we figured we’d go out to dinner. Not so easy. A lot of places are closed on Monday and Tuesday in Rincon.  We ended up making a nice little tour of the town stopping at various restaurants..lol.

Checking to see if Casa Isleña was open…Nope.

Checking to see if the Harbor Resturant was open…..Nope.

We tried Ode to the Elephants too, but they aren’t open till Wed.  So finally we went to Villa Cofresi.  That turned out just fine.  Sun setting over the ocean, live music, good food and even a piece of birthday cheese cake.

I got to thinking about it and I don’t think that I’ve spent a birthday outside of Colorado!  So this was a first for me.  It’s been an interesting life and journey thus far.  I didn’t ever expect to have accomplished half the things that I have!  It’s fun to look back on life and look forward to more and celebrate the opportunity to be alive.  That’s the best gift of all!  Well that and this table to sit at:

This year’s birthday gift (very useful)

We have been making the place a little more comfortable each day.  Today we got a table from Sams.  It’s nice to have a place to sit other than the bed..lol.  Plus it’s an outdoor table so we can use it on the roof/patio too.  We got an electric shower head / heater as well, that I will post more about later on.  Suffice to say it’s more comfortable to have warm water rather than cold swimming pool water in the morning!

Overall it was one of my favorite birthdays!

Well….We tried to head out to Puerto Rico today but the Universe stopped us.  We have our bags packed, our plane tickets bought, a rental car reserved and we had been screened by security at the airport.   We even got on the plane!  There we waited.  It was announced that something was wrong with the air conditioner.  Then after about 2 hours of sitting in the plane at the gate, it was announced that something had to be fixed that controlled the cabin pressure.

I am more inclined to think that the pilots didn’t have AC and they didn’t want to fly..lol.

So we had to de-plane, reschedule our trip for tomorrow and call my mom to pick us up.  (Thanks Moms! Cassie’s mom for taking us twice and my mom for the emergency pick up today)

Waiting in Line at DIA to Reschedule Our Flight

Hopefully things work out better tomorrow.  We are going to get in touch with the airline too, as they wasted an entire day for us.  Maybe they will respond with something in return, but I’ve never gone thru this so I don’t know what that might be?

Until Tomorrow (DIA)

It reminds me of a Dr Seuss book I read once (an excerpt from Oh, The Places You’ll Go)”

You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…
…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

NO!That’s not for you!

Somehow you’ll escape
all that waiting and staying.
You’ll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.


Waiting in the Living Room (aka our Hotel Lobby)

On the sidebar of this site, you may have noticed a little green vine crawling up the side. Well, we have added a new feature: the Moving to Rincon Progress Meter. It is a scale from one to 100 that will track our progress to our goal of living in Rincon, Puerto Rico. Mostly it measures the amount we estimated that we need to save in order to move there and be able to do some major upgrades to the property, but it also covers some things like ongoing income sources as well.

At this point in time you will notice we are at approximately a 35 on the scale or 35% of the way there. We estimate an increase of more or less about 5% per month on this meter. We thought this might be a fun way for those of you out in Internet-land to watch the progress we are making as we close the gap to moving and living in Rincon. We will be down visiting Rincon in just a few short weeks, so watch the blog soon for updates straight from there.

We have finally picked the time we will be back down in Rincon/Puerto Rico: mid January 2012. We have quite a bit we would like to get done while we are there. We have been going back and forth on what to do with the current wood house that is there now. We vacillate between fixing it up and tearing it down to build something new. As of now, I think we are again leaning toward taking it down and rebuilding with the wood some sort of “tree house” or jungle structures in the area down below. We probably won’t get started on that with this trip, but we do have quite a few “to-dos” once we arrive. Here is our list so far (and who wanted it on the list):

Bananas in Puerto Rico (or are they plantains?)

* Plant banana trees (BK)
* Visit with ARC ENG -the architecture/engineering business in Rincon (CK)
* Visit the Rincon Treehouse place to talk about specifics (BK)
* Visit Mangosteen person in Mayaguez if we have enough time (CK)
* CRIM? We haven’t done this yet and probably should (neither really want to)
* Fix up kitchenette to have running water (BK)
* Get estimate for cost of our property ideas by local contractor
* Get hot running water rigged if possible (CK)
* Buy a heavy duty weed-wacker at Home Depot, as the property is probably very overgrown by now (BK)
*Take a surf lesson – if we have time (CK)
* Have a small little fire at night on the property (BK)
*Walk to the beach from property (CK)
* Get rest of bees removed from walls if possible (BK)
* Find closest hospital (just in case-ha) -CK
*Find thrift or 2nd hand stores in the area (CK)