Say "Hello" to Rocky!!!

After receiving various criticisms over my blog being too Feline-centric, I decided I should strive for a little more balance by showing you a picture of this friendly pooch waiting outside my door. His name is Rocky and he belongs to the landlords above and is a very friendly and well-behaved dog.

As for goings on.. just been doing a steady amount of surfing as my shoulder continues to recover. Never surfing too long and the surf hasn't been too big lately either which makes things easier. The one exception being a session up at Wilderness in Aguadilla on Friday morning. There was good size there - about head high - as well as very strong offshore winds which held the wave up for a long time. Unfortunately, it also makes it a lot more difficult to paddle into the wave, especially if you're riding a shortboard as I was (and also if you're still a big time surf rookie!). There was also a very strong current in the water, so once you reached the take off zone, you couldn't just catch your breath, you had to keep paddling continuously just to hold your position. So, in between that, and lots of aborted take offs ie. paddling like a madman to try and catch the wave while the offshore wind just holds it up and keeps it from breaking, I was pretty tired after about 2 hours. And most significantly, my shoulder was tight and swollen again.. dadgumit! Luckily a day of rest on Saturday, lots of ultrasound, stretching and some light easy days in Rincon have reduced the stiffness and swelling and I am feeling good again.

And politics, yeah, those have been in high gear around here the past few days.. and what was cute for the first day or two, has now become incredibly annoying. The candidates have been having rallies and parades, which they conduct through major streets and highways... they usually consist of tons of cars, tons of people drinking on the side of the roads, 4 Wheelers, ATVs, motorcycles, horn honking, tire squealing, engine revving, loud ass music and speakers, and traffic blockades. This was all just building into a crescendo for the actual Primary election which occurred yesterday on Sunday.

And Sunday was a special day alright as alcohol sales were banned on the island! Although there were no planned rallies on that day, people still gathered on the streets, especially in front of the campaign offices. And late on Sunday night, there was another traffic jam in Aguada as I was driving back home from Rincon. As I was sitting in my car, all of a sudden I see about a hundred kids just hauling ass down the street towards me.. a few seconds later, about 30 cops decked in Riot Gear in pursuit run by.. who knows what had beeng going down.. but as I sat there, I contemplated that for once I was actually grateful for the blandness and general apathy associated with politics back on the mainland....

Here, experience the excitement as my progress is once more ground to a halt as another political cluster--err I mean parade passes by.

Looking out my front yard, it's the US Coast Guard again. This time, it looks like they're keeping an eye on a snorkeler in the foreground.. that must be a hell of a swim from Santo Domingo!!

Someone else told me that they haven't gotten sick of the sunset pictures yet, so here's another attempt to actually push your tolerance for these pics over the limit.