Picnic

Picnic improvisé à La Jolla avec maman et Lyle.

Chaine montagneuse

Vue surprenante de notre chaîne montagneuse malgré le mauvais temps.
Les sommets souvent couverts même quand il fait beau étaient tous
dégagés. Je n'avais malheureusement pas mon appareil photo et ai du
utiliser mon téléphone. Depuis Gourbeyre nous avions une vue superbe
des trois Chutes du Carbet.

Rain and shine

Our tropical weather is the most unpredictable one. You go from blue sky and sunshine to full deluge in the middle of a sentence. The most unusual thing is when you still have sunshine and you look up and wonder where the rain is coming from. Here we have a saying when that happens: "The Devil is marrying his daughter behind the church". I can only assume that it was born from the un-natural experience of rain, blue sky and sunshine all at the same time.

An tan lontan

A mural of a bill from the "Bank of Guadeloupe" back when we had our
own money.

Miami airport

On my way to Guadeloupe once again I had to rely on American Airlines
this time flying from LAX to Dallas and then to Miami. I had chosen
that route because those flights had the most unsold seats although I
wasn't so sure once I got to the airport and saw the crowd. I tried
not to stress and did get a seat on both flights. My rationale for not
just buying a ticket is that I could spend that money on my family
instead. Is it worth a little stress? To me it is, even if each time I
say it's the last time. I had to buy a ticket from Miami to
Guadeloupe, so flying for free (except for the 2 boxes of chocolate I
bought for the crews) the rest of the way, is a good deal. I arrived
in Miami around 11:30pm and after getting my bags, went back upstairs
to find a quiet spot to spend a few hours. I had to check in at 6:30am
and decided it wasn't worth it to get a hotel room for barey 4 hours.
Well.... There are no dark and quiet spot in this airport. I found a
bench were I could lay down (most of them have armrests) and closed my
eyes. 6 seconds later, those announcements you barely hear while
you're rushing through terminals, all of a sudden were loud and
annoying. You have the one for the unnatended bags, the one for the
liquids and gels, the 15mn time check....in English then in Spanish.
Truly there are barely a couple of minutes without announcements and
those are filled with the background music.

So here I was trying to ignore all that on an uncomfortable bench with
the cleaners walking up and down the hall by foot or driving some kind
of machine and that voice that just would not shut up. I sat down and
read.

I would lay down again after a while but just couldn't fall asleep at
all. And to think that at home I can sleep with lights and the TV on.
Interesting.

At 4am people started to come in and by 4:30 it was like Grand Central
Station in rush hour.

Maybe next time I'll get myself tickets and a nice hotel room. Or not.