Lorri and Buzz Update: We Made It!

Did you ever have any doubts? No? Well, we sure did. When we hatched our five year plan to move to Puerto Rico, it seemed like a far away dream. Exactly the kind of dreams that are far enough out into the future to allow you some wiggle room to escape them and run back to the safety of mediocrity.

But, events transpired and created a perfect storm to turn a five year plan into a three year plan overnight, and then suddenly, a six month plan. The six month plan was Buzz's last ditch effort to try and apply some thoughtful common sense to the project with the recognition that Lorri would take forever and a week to get rid of her 60 dump truck load clothes collection and the 400 totes she kept squirrelled away in the basement containing what Buzz can only assume to be rock collections, as well as every Kleenex her children ever used growing up, neatly organized by date, color, and affliction types for each child.

Lorri, however, was a woman with a mission and had everything gone in a few short weeks. Before we knew it we were sleeping on mattresses on the floor, and scooping up a dog, a cat, and 8 bags of luggage and heading for an island in the Caribbean. 

We are pleased to report that since having landed here, we have almost entirely furnished the house, bought a car, and Buzz built two outdoor cooking devices. Lorri has her workshop mostly setup, and we finally have new phones and laptops!

Our time has not been without adventures, like the lizard that ran across Buzz's foot on the first morning, causing him to launch hot coffee all over himself and halfway across the living room (tile floors...love em!). The same lizard ran and hid in the bathroom and surprised Lorri while she was sitting on the toilet by leaping out of the sink at her. The writer is not permitted to say what happened next, but let's just say the yellow liquid all over the bathroom floor was NOT coffee. The cat later proved her worth by dispatching said lizard though.

There was also the giant toad who lived outside of our bedroom window and screamed the song of death of 1,000 suffering rabbits at night. He has since been relocated to the rain forest further down the road where he can busy himself keeping the wild pigs awake at night. 

It has been a whirlwind week and we have hit every pothole between our house in Rincon and the stores in Mayaguez and Aguadilla, about 400 times. We will post more photos of the house soon along with another update, but we wanted to let everyone know that we have arrived, are alive, and doing well, and here are a few of the reasons for being in Puerto Rico... 

We call this one 'dominoes no more' because these are the places the old men like to sit

and play dominoes and this one in Rincon has been undermined by the Hurricane Maria.

Among a sea of boxes and Styrofoam, we have one room finished. This was our first one.

The view over Buzz's coffee cup on the back patio in the morning.

Lorri pondering the meaning of life, and wondering how she landed such an awesome husband.

Lorri looking as beautiful as the sunset in the distance.

Sunset from Aguada, PR 10/22/19

Aguada, PR Sunset 10/22/19

Aguada Sunset

Aguada Sunset

View from Anasco restaraunt

Anasco, PR

Here are some artist friends you can learn more about by clicking on the tabs up above! 

Shopping in Mayaguez... it's a lot like driving in Mayaguez. It is the sweetest and kindest little old lady who gets behind the wheel of her car or her shopping cart and will run you off the road or slit your throat for your spot in line. More on the excitement of driving in Puerto Rico later! 

We will leave you for now with a few words from the poet, Henry Herbert Knibbs, called The Sheep and the Goats...

    I don't mind working to earn my bread,

         And I'd just as soon keep straight;

    I've listened to what the preacher said

         About rams and sheep at the gate;

    I like to sleep in an easy bed,

         But I tell you this, old mate:

    A man like me, what you call hobo,

         Can blister and sweat and save

    All his life, and earn just enough of dough

         To prove that he is a slave,

    And have, when it comes his time to go,

         Well, enough to line his grave.

    Say, mate, have you ever seen the mills

         Where the kids at the looms spit blood?

    Have you been in the mines when the fire-damp blew?

         Have you shipped as a hand with a freighter's crew

    Or worked in a levee flood?

   Have you rotted wet in a grading-camp,

         Or scorched on a desert line?

    Or done your night stunt with your lamp,

         Watching the timbers drip with damp

    And hearing the oil-rig whine?

    Have you seen the grinders fade and die,

         As the steel-dust cut them down?

    Have you heard the tunnel-driller's cry

         When the shale caved in? Have you stood by

    When his wife came up from town?

  Have you had your pay held back for tools

         That you never saw or could use?

    Have you gone like a fool with the other fools

         To the boss's saloon, where the strong-arm rules,

    And cashed your time for booze?

   Well, those are the games—I've played 'em all—

         That a man like me can play.

    And this lovely world is a hard old ball;

         And so at the last I took a fall

    To the right and proper way;

   And that is to see all the sights you can

         Without the admission price.

    That's why I've changed to a traveling man,

         With a quilt and a rope and a kind of plan

    Of hitting no one place twice.

   I do no kicking at God or Fate;

         I keep my shoes for the road.

    A long gray road-and I love it, mate;

         Hay-foot, straw-foot, that's my gait!

    And I carry no other man's load.

    For I'm free! Oh, the lowlands by the sea

         To the mountains clear across

    On the other side, they belong to me;

         A man owns nothing unless he's free,

    And I am my own good boss.

   I don't mind working to earn my bread,

         And I'd just as soon keep straight,

    But according to what the preacher said,

         I'm a ram—and I've missed the gate;

    But I'm jogging along, and jogging ahead,

         And perhaps I'll find it, mate.

The Inspiring Artisans of Agua Viva

Recently, we read an article about a man whose father had asked each of his children nightly what they had done to make the world a better place for humanity that day. While that seems like a heavy load to put on a nine year old, it is a question worth asking our adult selves. 

To that end, we try to ask that of ourselves, and one of the things we have come to believe is that art, and artists, and artisans of every kind make the world a much better place, so we ought to support them as often as possible. 

That is actually one of the reasons we have come to love Puerto Rico so much. Per capita, there are more creatives here than anywhere else we have been, and more appreciation for the things that make life beautiful, like music, and dance and art and literature... and sunsets. 

One of our many reasons for this blog is to introduce our readers to some of the people who help to make Puerto Rico our favorite place. Here are our first feature artists...

Agua Viva

Artist & Artisan from Aguadilla, PR

Carlos and Rita

contact: carlosyritaguaviva@gmail.com

follow: Instagram Aguaviva_pr

find: Rincon, PR Art Walk on Thursday Nights

& Rincon, PR Farmer's Market on Sundays

Last winter when we made our annual pilgrimage to the island, we attended the Rincon, PR weekly art walk held on Thursday nights and saw some of the creations by Carlos and Rita of Agua Viva.

Carlos loves wood. His passion is finding and rescuing the native hardwoods of Puerto Rico. In the wake of Hurricane Maria, there were hundreds of ancient, severely damaged hardwood trees on the island that would be left to rot, float away at high tide, or be burned or piled in landfills were it not for a relatively small number of people like Carlos and Rita. 

If you come to the island and speak with anyone who deals with rescued and recovered wood, you will find people as passionate about their mission as anyone who has dedicated their lives to rescuing horses or stray dogs. 

Carlos and Rita locate the wood in landfill piles and beaches, or topped with only trunks left standing in forests. Through this labor of love, a single branch of driftwood or entire trees are turned into logs, and then sliced into blanks that can be further sanded and polished and worked to most compliment the natural beauty of each piece of wood. If you ask about a piece, Carlos will pick it up, turn it in his hands and talk about how he loved working that particular piece, and what went into it, and how each piece was to sand, and how each knot revealed its most perfect self as he worked it with the paper and oils.

Carlos  creates cutting boards and other larger items from the wood. We would show you some but his creations are all sold out at the moment and orders are backed up, because craftsmen like Carlos will not rush a piece of wood. The wood demands respect and time to reveal itself and what it is capable of becoming.

Sometimes, though, there are pieces that are too small to make a good cutting board or table and the wood is too rare, too perfect, and too beautiful to part with. These are the pieces Rita selects to paint her works of art upon. We liked the marriage of polished salvaged wood and funky ocean dwellers so much, we bought a couple last winter, and here they are, about six inches or so in diameter....

We carried these little treasures all the way back to Iowa, and fell even deeper in love with them before returning them home to the island with us last week. They had been through a lot, so we thought they could use some company. What follows are their new friends, all swimming at home in the waters of our new dining room in Rincon, Puerto Rico...

As with anything from the art world, the pictures do not do these pieces justice. The table top piece alone is nearly two feet tall. Sadly, the ones in these pictures are not for sale, but we welcome you to enjoy them with us. The only way to appreciate them fully is to come and see them for yourself in Rincon, Puerto Rico. They will all be here waiting for you.

Also, if you follow Agua Viva on Instagram, they are pretty good about showing new pieces as they are created, and you can reach them via email, as they have reliably shipped their creations all around the world. 

The Final Countdown with a Few Surprises

Is that a union fist in the air already?

Given the due date of our next grandbaby, we were sort of putting off the move until mid-October so we could be here to greet her into the world. Well, guess what? She couldn't wait to get here, and now we welcome Eleanor Rose Malone a month early. She is healthy and strong and just chilling out at the NICU in Des Moines for a few weeks before she heads home.

So, we have made arrangements to take possession of the house in Rincon, Puerto Rico on October 15th. So, and get ready for this... we will rent a car in Des Moines on the 12th, drive down to Fort Lauderdale, and board an airplane on the 15th to Aguadilla, where we will rent another car until we buy one down there. 

If you're wondering why on earth we would drive from Iowa to Fort Lauderdale before boarding an airplane, it is because with our cocker spaniel (Scout) and our eight-toed Hemingway cat (Pilar), Buzz's stress level shot up to about an 11 thinking about going through security with four bags, two carry-ons, and two pet carriers, then having a layover while lugging almost as much crap around, and praying the dog doesn't poop, puke, or collapse. Fort Lauderdale, on the other hand, is a single flight, two and a half hours long, from one small airport to another small airport, where we can hurriedly get the animals outside upon landing. 

For the seemingly countless souls who ask us questions about logistics and are interested in them, we have sold the vast majority of our possessions since shipping costs are outrageous. We will take most of the clothes we are keeping (good-bye bulky winter crap!) as checked luggage. The absolutely must-have with her at all times personal stuff that won't fit into the luggage, along with the art, will be mailed to ourselves at the last minute via the good old United States Postal Service. Expensive, but still better than paying shipping and import fees on a big container to send crap we didn't really, really want or need anyhow. 

And, naturally, there will be a dozen or so totes left behind at some poor relative's house, full of the photos and crap so personal that it could never be parted with under any circumstances, and the only conceivable thing to do with it all, is to cram it into totes, hide it in some unseen space, and snicker at the thought of the grandkids who will end up having to sort through it all again some day, opening tote after tote in search of the family treasure, only to once again be disappointed by ceramic ashtrays in the shape of leaves made by Reagan in the third grade, and stack upons stacks of papers from grade school with stick figures surrounded by scribbles. 

But we also sort of figure that if everyone lives their life to the fullest, then that is all anyone should ever hope or desire to inherit. Enjoy the totes kids, and don't look for them in the will. They will be left for you all to fight over and discover the wonders of what all was too precious to throw away, and yet not quite valuable enough to shell out for the postage. Enjoy! 

Hurricanes and Haciendas in Puerto Rico

We have never felt so blessed in our entire lives. In the last few days, we have been inundated by people inquiring about the hurricane and how it may have impacted us. While Lorri has tried to keep everyone updated on FB, we wanted to open this post with how we experienced the hurricane. These first two photos are literally how the hurricane looked from our vantage point in Western Puerto Rico. 

Thankfully, the only thing our beloved part of the island had to show for the storm was some larger than normal waves for this time of year, and some unusually stunning sunsets in a place where stunning sunsets occur every single night of the year. 

Truth is, we rode out the vast majority of the storm at our favorite Aguada haunt, The Ocean BLVD Bar and Grill, where awesome food, great service, and friendly locals at a family owned business make every moment of surf watching even better than, well, surf watching. 

We have made some great friends at the Ocean, and one of them will eventually be a feature in a future blog, as we work to help one kick ass young woman achieve her dream of being her own boss at a tourism business. 

As the storm drew near, however, everything shut down in preparation, and unable to accomplish anything on the house hunting front, we drove around NW Puerto Rico taking in some of the awesome street art that just seems to happen everywhere...

We aren't sure who would allow their entire neighborhood to be painted like this, but we would like to have a drink or ten with every single one of them!

What the hurricane did cause was our return flight via Orlando to be delayed into infinity. Thanks to reports from others trying to get into Florida (Thank you, Tena!) we managed to avoid being part of the calamitous disasters caused by airlines of people being stranded in airports indefinitely. 

Frequent traveler secret: airlines will almost NEVER cancel a flight because it costs them money in refunds, and will instead happily allow people to just show up for flights that aren't ever going to happen and sit for hours and even days while they delay and delay and delay, knowing full good and well it isn't ever going to happen. 

The result of it all was we became stranded on a desert isle for another week, and a return flight via New Jersey. So, the house hunt continued...

Puerto Rican pride is on full display everywhere you go. It is a different sort of "nationalism" felt by a proud people who only love and adore their island. For every Puerto Rican flag, we see multiple aging Puerto Rican males wearing their US Military Veteran hats beneath them, as this too, is America, and these people too, are just as proud of Americans as you can find anywhere stateside.

Like any good Americans, they embrace their rights to freedom of assembly as witnessed recently when they retired a corrupt governor. Signs of their peaceful political uprising remain all over the island.

Some are more direct than others. We are actually sad to have missed the demonstrations and seeing the energy of so many standing up for justice and waving those bright beautiful flags into the air together. Truly, nothing could be more American than that, and it took a relatively tiny island to remind the rest of America what democracy actually looks like in action. It is not about being right or left, but about justice and injustice, right and wrong, and everyone can appreciate that, I think.

Lorri looking for a house (or not so much) in one of the awesome plazas in a town center. Like our town squares in Iowa, Puerto Rican towns all have open plazas where people gather for all sorts of festivities, special occasions, political debates, music concerts, and sometimes just for old men to sit beneath shade trees and play dominoes. I'm pretty sure that if we were being paid to house hunt and had a boss, we would have been fired on, like, the second day here.

Lorri gets up close and personal with the local fauna. Buzz, being fearless of all groups of weapon wielding men, but equally as fearful of small crawling things and the flying, man eating piranhas known as bats, warned her not to touch it, but she never listens to his wisdom regarding living creatures and their probable inherent dangers. More than likely, her hand will fall off later this week.

Wait, what were we supposed to be doing here? Oh yeah... house hunting! We remember now! That is pretty much how we did it, too. Waking up early and going for coffee (strangely, it is difficult to find coffee early in the morning, and even the local donut shop in Aguada we frequent doesn't open until 10am), then off to the beach for a walk to discover the treasures the surf delivered overnight, then back to the room to gawk at home listings and rentals until we lost interest and popped open a beer.

We must have looked at a hundred homes online, and several dozen on drives that are Se Vende (for sale). We even managed to get hold of a couple of realtors to see a few in person (not an easy trick in a place where even businesses operate on "island time" and have a tendency to get back to you... when they get back to you... and sometimes never at all). 

We continued to look for affordable real estate to purchase in our beloved Rincon-Aguada corridor, but Rincon is way out of our price league, and Aguada has a lot of properties within walking distance of the beach that have very murky pasts, and even murkier, less certain futures. The general feeling of the longtime locals is not to buy in seaside Aguada at any price because if the water does not get you, some other unseen forces, like eventual government flood zone intervention, probably will.

Puerto Rico house hunting lesson #485: TALK to the locals and the neighbors. DO NOT trust a realtor about a house, or an inspector, or an anyone. Ask the neighbors. The people of this part of the island especially, are incredibly welcoming and friendly and will do virtually anything to help even a stranger. 

In fact, they will even fight one another for the privilege of helping you and argue how their advice is the best. No. Really. It is totally true. If you get out of your car in Rincon or Aguada and look generally confused or lost or in need of help, someone will eventually come and talk to you, and that will in turn draw a small crowd as everyone wants to know what's going on. Then, when they find out you are wanting some sort of information or assistance, they will each seek to offer you the best advice or assistance and argue as to why their's is better than the other person's advice or assistance. 

So, if you ever find yourself in a strange neighborhood in Puerto Rico, and the dogs and chickens are milling about and everyone seems to be staring at you... know that they are most likely staring because they are wondering if you need anything they might be able to offer you. Reason #987 that we LOVE this island. 

What? Oh yeah... we were house hunting. That's right. We remember now. So, in the midst of all of the phone calls and texts and real estate agents, Lorri thought it might help to write a post on a Rincon FB group. Pffft, said Buzz, FB group?! Whoever heard of finding anything on a FB group...especially in a crazy market like Rincon, where the surfing and 1960s California vibe, has drawn artists, tourists, and snowbirds in like a hurricane surf, and the prices are out of this world, and, generally speaking, out of our budget as well. FB Group. Whatev's Lorri. You go girl. Do your cute, pointless thing while Buzz does all of the heavy lifting of actually texting unresponsive real estate agents for homes we don't really want to look at anyhow. 

Fast forward like, five minutes...

Lorri: Someone messaged me about a house in Rincon.

Buzz: What? I'm busy here, honey. I have a line on a hundred year old home made of rotting concrete perched precariously upon a cliff twenty miles up a narrow four foot wide mountain road where the locals drive eighty-five miles per hour.

Lorri: He says he wants us to go look at his home in Rincon as he is being detailed out of the country for his final tour of duty abroad in the military. 

Buzz: We have already looked. We can't afford to buy or rent a home in Rincon. Our budget would only allow us to rent a box large enough for one of us and our dog. The other person and the cat will have to sleep outside. Remember?

Lorri: I think we should still go look at it. He seems really nice.

Buzz: Ugggh. Fine. I will set aside my important work of negotiating on the awesome 'cash only' deal I may have just scored on this oceanfront bungalow made entirely of drift wood and paper mache to humor you.

We drove to the house just outside of Rincon when the owner was absent, picking up his son from the airport, as he is in college in Florida and was fleeing the hurricane. The owner, as it turns out, is also a recent fellow empty nester.

What we discovered turned out to be the most beautiful oasis we have seen in all of our drives, nestled in the hills on an estate just outside of Rincon. This picture does not do it justice. He had asked us only to drive out, look at it, and offer what we thought it was worth to rent while he was away.

Being extremely familiar with the market in the area, we knew immediately that "what it is worth" is far more than what we could pay. But in a week full of crushing disappointments, it would be a relatively easy one to have someone tell us we could not afford such a beautiful home. 

After messaging with the owner more, we drove out today to meet with him. His name is Ben. His place is stunning. We are in nearly the same place in life, with nearly the same humor and outlook, and almost the same dreams and desires for the future. He scoffed at our offer and said it was too much to pay. He wanted less money and more to know that his home would be lived in and cared for by people who would watch over it, and most of all, enjoy it while he was away. 

Ben avoiding the camera.

The garage where Lorri's art magic will soon be happening. Ben refuses to allow her to hang her creations inside the house until he can see some of her work. Buzz agreed this was probably a wise decision as she intends to work with wood mostly and has to date only produced popsicle stick art back in grade school for want of the proper tools and a workspace. Good news is... Rincon is at the literal cutting edge of wood art, and there are any number of artisans working in wood that any museum back in the states would be proud to display, and she is a very quick study.

Ben pointing at something in the kitchen.

Ben pointing at something else. He likes to point at stuff. We mostly look in the direction he points and nod our heads in agreement. We aren't even sure what he is saying most times. The house is just too stunning.

What occured at the house was something less of a potential business transaction, and more of a bonding ceremony of kindred spirits. We sat on Ben's front porch for over an hour after we toured the property and sampled fruits from the trees and made friends with the dogs and neighboring cows. We had a ton of great laughs too. 

But our tour did not stop with the house. We drove together to see the homes of the other people in the area Ben knew (practically everyone), and then on to his father's house to meet his family. And by day's end we do not only have a place to lay our heads for the foreseeable future, but an entire new circle of people we feel so at home with, we can call them our friends already. 

This is Puerto Rico. These are the people of this part of Puerto Rico. If you get out of your car in almost any neighborhood and look lost or in need, people will fight to help you. And, as it turns out, they also do the same for those lost souls who make posts on FB. 

In our part of rural Iowa, we never drive by someone who is broke down or walking without stopping to help, and we never ask anything in return. Remove the beaches, the bars, the mountains, and the palm trees, and it is truly amazing, at how much this place, and these people, so far removed by geography, can feel so much to us... like home. 

Editors Note: Ben is not so camera shy as all that, but we did not ask his full permission to make him a celebrity in rural Iowa amongst our readers, so we edited him to seem a lot more mysterious than he actually was. Honestly, if you met Ben with us drinking at a bbq back home, you would never know that we three had just met, and you would sort of get the feeling that we had been sitting under the same shade tree together flipping each other shit for years. 

Thanks for reading, everyone!