Round II...

After an incredible visit home complete with a fun, old-fashioned family Christmas; as well as Patriots playoff games, college basketball, and lots of great family dinners, I am back in the land whose motto is, “Out of many, one people.” I took a hiatus from writing while I was home, save the entry about La Familia, but that had more to do with wanting to rest and not do much of anything. A few of you wanted more and I thank you for your enthusiasm and interest.

I did not think my day of travel back to the island could be longer than my trek down last month. Yesterday out did that one by a good couple of hours due to American Airlines and Jamaican customs. My day started early and I felt I was already behind the curve due to a brief and shallow sleep between the hours of 1 am and 5 am. Those precious four hours of sleep were not sound ones because my anxiety has been ratcheted up these last few days for various reasons. I have not been sleeping well and this was just one more night in a string of nights that are best described as mediocre. It all came to some sort of a climax when I woke up and I spent the first 30 minutes of my day just crying. I’m not entirely sure what I was crying about and in retrospect, it honestly doesn’t matter. There was simply a conglomeration of pressure building up inside and had this release not happened, I surely would have had an episode on the plane similar to Ben Stiller’s in “Meet the Parents.”

(Whether you find that admission admirable or insane is immaterial. Those of you familiar with my dance with anxiety know that after moments like that, I can tackle a day like a rock star. I don’t fully understand it and I don’t intend to. I just go with it. On with the show.)

I finally got around to putting my feet on the floor and scurried around the house grabbing a final load of laundry from the dryer, packing up that which was not yet in my luggage, and trying to eat some kind of breakfast. My appetite suffers greatly when anxiety comes home to roost, which, if you are familiar with the amount of food I am capable of putting away, is a touch ironic.

For all of my expedience and efficiency I was awarded with one of the slowest trips to the airport in recent memory. A little snow fell in Rhode Island during the night and apparently its presence had adversely affected people’s ability to drive. For those of you unfamiliar with modern rules of international travel, there is a 45 minute deadline by which you must check your luggage or else you are not permitted to board the plane. I had made my deadline by a mere five minutes.

So let’s recap: I slept little and poorly, cried a ton when I first woke up, and had come within an inch of not making my flights. The worst had to be behind me, right?

The first leg of my trip, a flight from Providence to Charlotte, NC, was really just a huge fog which lingered in the aftermath of the fore mentioned whirlwind morning which played in my mind like a montage from The Benny Hill Show complete with the zany horn music. (Some of you will understand that reference. Others will not. It’s okay.) I had three hours to kill in North Carolina and I successfully did so by finding some breakfast to quell my surging appetite which had magically come back to me on the plane; tying up some loose ends with some help from the free internet access in the airport, and then talking with my youngest sister before the next leg of my trip; a flight from Charlotte to Miami. As the plane took off my fatigue began to catch up with me and I spent the first half hour of the flight with my head pressed up against the wall of the plane only to wake up with a stiff neck and an imprint of the wall texture on my forehead – a canvass which is larger than usual thanks to the most recent shaving of my head. The remainder of the flight was uneventful and uncomfortable. US Airways has yet to catch up with the other carriers who have taken multiple rows out of their planes in favor of a bit more leg room.

Upon arriving in Miami I was met with the longest walk of my life from one end of the airport to the other. It’s shaped like a gigantic horseshoe and all of the terminals (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H) shoot out from the rounded portion of the structure. I arrived in terminal H and had to walk all the way to A. The most fun, and somewhat perilous, part of my trek was darting and weaving among an intense crowd of people who all looked like rejected tabloid fodder. A warehouse of Barbie dolls doesn’t have that much silicon and unless you have had your eyes tested with those drops that keep them from dilating properly, I really don’t see a need to wear sunglasses the size of window panes while you are indoors. That’s just me.

I probably would not be so bitter towards such an embrace of popular fashion had my experience getting out of Miami had not been so dreadful. A layover of just under 90 minutes was extended an hour only to be increased when the co-pilot, during his inspection, noticed one of the nose gear wheels was torn. This, of course, was not good and needed repair. The nose of the plane was elevated and the wheel changed; all while we boarded the plane and in so doing, the crew had inadvertently disengaged the pilot’s ability to steer the nose gear; a situation which was not discovered until we had already been pushed back from the gate. For obvious reasons, that needed to be rectified and by the time the wheels went up, it was 7:00pm and I was originally slated to land in Jamaica over an hour ago.

Fatigue found me again and I took in yet another power nap for which I am so famous. This time I assumed the position I normally take when napping on the El in Chicago – arms crossed at my stomach and my head hanging straight down. It tends to do a number on the neck muscles if you’re not used to it. My arrival in Kingston was uneventful right up until I got to customs. Apparently you need a copy of your itinerary when entering the country (a detail which was obviously skipped during my last entry) and when I didn’t have one, I went through a torturous scenario of obtaining one with the customs official. This easily tacked another 45 minutes on to my overall journey but according to the customs official, “Me would have been sitting ‘ere all night doing nuttin’ anyway, sir. You’ve made it more interesting. I’m just glad you was at the end of the line, not in da middle.”

Yeah, me too.

There was much rejoicing when I finally met up with my ride. There was even more rejoicing when I noticed he had a New England Patriots bumper sticker from their most recent Super Bowl victory. It immediately turned to much grumbling and griping over their loss to the Colts and exit from the playoffs. Turns out he’s from Warren, MA so we had plenty to talk about. I would like to say we took a quick trip through the mean streets of Kinston but to call them “mean” might be a bit of an understatement. Of course, any major city in an area has its bad parts, we just happened to be passing through all of them on the way to our destination and I vaguely recall seeing CNN footage from a war zone in the Middle East that didn’t look too different from this.

I was soon as my destination for the night; a former hotel called The Constant Spring which had been purchased by nuns half way through the 20^th century. It serves as their convent and sits on a gigantic compound which houses among other things, a school and a retreat center. So far, what I have seen of the former hotel is gorgeous. Complete with a swimming pool and a lush central courtyard, the look and feel is similar to that of a large Italian villa and much of the furniture which adorns the place is left over from its original purchase. The lobby (which I am lounging in as I write this) is a large, square room with tall French doors at opposite ends which let in a plethora of light. The 20 foot ceiling is supported by tall, square columns whose bases are decorated with low, stylized chairs and small side tables between them. Breezes pass through the room at any given moment and considering that I woke up yesterday to 27 degree weather, the change is most welcome.

Yes, folks, I’m back. I continue to meet fascinating people whose stories are as varied as the places from which the come. Since arriving I have met a Chinese woman who is also a native Jamaican and the one in charge around here. Sr. Goretti is her name and even though she is not even five feet tall, her presence looms very, very large. I have also had the pleasure of meeting a Canadian named Greg who is here helping in all things computers and he and I spoke “geek” for much of the day as he explained his plan of implementing Linux servers and desktops around here. (If that means absolutely nothing to you, don’t sweat it.)

Later today I will take in the taping of a radio program at the University of the West Indies and hopefully some more of this beautiful hotel. Tomorrow I make my way back to Bull Savannah and the great people I met last month. It will be a two hour drive just to cover a little less than 60 miles and we are planning to leave at 5:30am. At least the sunrise coming up over the Caribbean Sea will be fun to watch.