We're baaaaaaack!

That, my friends, was a long-ass day.

Not the one that apparently lasted four years between the last post in this blog, and this one. No no no. The one that we just spent getting here to Condado, San Juan, Puerto Rico again.

It went for a couple of weeks, this day. We had to get the house ready for our renter, an actress who was going to be doing the Williamstown Theater Fest during July. We knew this; we’d known it for months, and it was going to help us finance our trip to Puerto Rico. Knowing, then, as we did, that there would be a family of three rummaging about our house (and I mean that in the nicest possible way), we had to make every damned inch of the place presentable, top to friggin’ botton, and also hide away all our personal bits and sensitive documents and troves of evidence. All of which took a hell of a lot of work, which we parsed out over two solid weeks.

Since we were going to be renting anyway, we decided to make some quick cash by renting the place out for the three nights of last weekend, kind of a trial run before the long-term renters arrived. So we essentially got the place spiffy twice, with a short stint of actual occupation in between that managed to filthy the place up considerably.

In addition to all of that, we had to pack and prepare for six weeks away. Arrange for someone to cut the yard, get the mail stopped, get health certificates for the animals, on and on. Thursday was the last day – we’d handed off the key to the renter on Wednesday evening, and had all day Thursday to fret. I mean, prepare. Well, we managed to do both, simultaneously. We finished Thursday evening and had a goodbye dinner at Brad and Betsy’s that lasted until 10:00, came home, put the kids to “bed” on the couch so as not to dirty any linens, and dragged the suitcases into the front room to wait for our ride, which was to arrive at 12:30. At night.

She was early, we piled in, and had three cramped hours in a minivan, with three adults, two kids, a dog in a crate, a cat in a carry-on cage, a guitar, three backpacks, and three large suitcases. It was pretty claustrophobic. We had to get to the airport and have Clarabelle registered with Delta Cargo two hours before our 6:48 flight. We missed the turn to the gates a time or two, and were then attended by the two slowest clerks ever to refuse to break out of a slow-motion saunter between the photocopier, the stapler, and the computer, all located at the remotest possible separate corners of their work space. When one of these tortoise-people finally handed us our paper, he said, “Go, man, go, you’ve got to get to the gate. I don’t know if you’ll have time.”

We managed to miss the gates again (I say “we” – I wasn’t driving. Our expert chauffeur, a paid professional, zoomed past the turnoff for the gates. Twice.), raced to turn in our checked baggage, and hurtled over to security, where we stood in the longest, most slow-moving line you can imagine. Two people – TWO! – at JFK were checking everyone’s ID and boarding pass, and then two more – TWO! – were running X-ray machines for our carry-ons. We weren’t full-body scanned (has that stopped…?), and managed to walk straight down from security to our gate, B-20, the closest one available in a stroke of luck, and straight onto the plane. Moments after we arrived, they announced they had closed the door. We were very nearly the last to board.

They had us spread out all over the plane, but Janneke and I each managed to talk someone into moving so we could have a child near us. And all I really remember of the flight after that was being cramped, having Quinn’s sleeping head on my shoulder, and the strong, serene voice of our captain telling us we were going to fly around a storm and thus lose 30 minutes or so and arrive 20 minutes late. He was very good, this guy, knew just what to include and what not to, pointed out the storm off to our right as we wheeled around it so we could tell why he was doing what he was doing. Still, I was so achy in so many of my joints by the last hour of the flight, due mostly to being over-tired, that his confident and well-spoken voice just seemed cloying and haughty at the end. What can I say, I’m an evil person. Don’t tell the kids.

Who were super troopers throughout, hefting their heavy bags (Tess’ made heavier by her insistence on bringing the actual coins from her piggy banks with her to Puerto Rico, and not the equivalent amount in dollar bills I offered to swap them for) and dragging suitcases behind them over to meet Marimer.

Marimer is a friend of Aurora’s, the woman whose apartment we had been going to rent. When Aurora found out her plans had changed and she couldn’t be out of her apartment for the whole 6 weeks, she contacted Marimer, who lives in the same building one floor up, and who was going to be away. So Marimer not only agreed to rent us her gorgeous, tastefully-decorated, comfortable apartment, but also offered to come get us at the airport. This was the first of my cell phone moments – I bought a $9.99 cell phone at Best Buy to bring along, and used it when we arrived to call Marimer. She then called me at the baggage carousel to see which group we were (we had never met), and we walked about for a minute or so, describing our clothes and our positions until we caught on and recognized each other. Very odd, this whole cell phone business – and ridiculously, frighteningly useful. That little guy starts buzzing in your pocket, and you just know, “Someone’s calling to help me!” Which Marimer was, and which another guy was a little later on.

Marimer is wonderful and warm and insisted on carrying a bunch of stuff for us all the way back to her car. We stuffed all our bags and almost all of our people into it and headed to the Enterprise rental service. (I took the shuttle, and beat them by a few minutes.)

Getting a car out of there turns out to take a good 45 mintues. It’s a holiday weekend, and lots of folks are coming home to Puerto Rico to celebrate. Our flight was chockety-block full, and it made for some really interesting anthropology at the rent-a-car counter.

At least three different families were there, in which the parents are from Puerto Rico, and the children, from toddlers to teenagers, are from the US. And in almost all the cases, the kids just about refused to speak Spanish. They would respond to their parents in English, their parents would sometimes have to repeat things they said in English because their Spanish instructions were met with “Wha…?” – It was interesting to watch. There were probably others there where the kids spoke perfect Spanish, and so I just didn’t notice. But there were definitely a number of these generationally distinct linguistic family groups.

I also began to notice at Enterprise something that continued to strike me throughout the rest of the evening, and which I don’t recall from our last visit: Puerto Rican men are jacked. Big, round shoulders, thick chests, narrow waists. Most seem to be carrying fifteen or twenty pounds extra, but a huge number look like they were serious contenders and bad-asses maybe five years ago. I hadn’t thought of them as “burly” the way I do, say, Russians, or Icelandic folks. But they are a formidable bunch. Wild generalizations: It’s what I do.

From Enterprise to pick up Clarabelle, who at this point had been in her cage since about 3:00 AM. (It was near 1:00 PM.) And buzzzz! My pocket rang! It was the guy at the cargo counter, telling me my dog was safe and sound. “We’re trying to find your building”, I said. “We’re near a Burger King, I can see a post office in the distance –“ “You’re right near by!”, he said. “Go to the post office, and we’re in the building all the way to the left. Go around the left edge of the building and up the stairs to come in.”

Cha, ching. Problem solved. Cell phones, man. I am becoming a believer.

Marimer led us to Condado, which seemed shabbier than I remembered it. But I think that was my tiredness talking, because after she showed us her apartment, and we set up the kids with “The Princess Bride” and Janneke and I hit the hay for a nap of almost exactly the length of the film, and I walked downstairs with Clarabelle to take her for a spin before an early supper, the neighborhood recovered all its magic from four years ago. I was delighted to tool down Ashford Ave with the pooch in tow, to hear Spanish all around me, to be reminded by the passersby, and by the looks I was getting, that Condado is a hotspot in Puerto Rico for gay nightlife…All fun, nice memories and impressions to have reborn again with a quick dog walk.

Barefoot. More on that tomorrow, I suspect.

Early supper at Bebo’s. I’m now more convinced than ever that there is no portion of a pig that, when cut off and heated at length or even burnt, is not stupefyingly delicious. I had the oven-roasted pork with fried bananas and rice & beans; Tess and Janneke split a mofongo con camarones; and Quinn had the milanesa de res that he’s been talking about for four years. A very, very happy reunion with our neighborhood Bebo’s. And a reunion that pretty much guarantees that if and when I step on the electronic scale that I noticed this evening in Marimer’s bedroom, I will no longer be south of 170.

Just before bed, Janneke, in her half-awake stupor, said that if we ever were to come into some money, she would love to buy an apartment in Condado so we could do this more often. Now, she may not be completely in her right mind; after all, she said that after our two-week-long day that led up to our happy landing here, sitting on a couch in her pajamas, having administered herself a shot of some liquer or other to guarantee a good night's sleep. But after all that, she's in agreement with me. I’ve been saying that for a while, but it finally appears she might be coming around. So, if any of you were thinking of sending Quinn a million-dollar birthday card, this would be the year. We’ll put the place in his name, don’t worry. It’ll all be on the up-and-up.

Off to bed, man. I’m too old for this stuff…