Taking things head on

Part of the family that weaves the world's largest web, 3-4 feet across. You don't walk through them, the silk and your fear is that strong.


Well its been a long time since my last update. Among the many valid reasons, tucked away deep in the back, is laziness. This is not as easy as others make it look--not to mention my computer is tending to crash all the time with the dreaded blue screen, "Hardware failure, Memory/Parity error, the system has halted". It truly sucks besides which computer makers have no idea what causes it.

Be that as it may I arrived as planned on October 20th. Blue skies, sunny weather. It had rained while I was gone, a lot! Next on tap was my planned concrete pour for the 24th.


This nice beautiful footing/beam, neatly tucked under a massive blue tarp while I returned to San Francisco, no longer looked like this. Instead massive rains had flooded the house slab and then drained, of course, under the tarp and moved the entire deck area an inch or two down the hill. And if that wasn't enough, the earth collapsed around my pier before I could button it up. Ah yes, hillside building in a tropical rain forest. There was no possibility of straightening the beam or digging out the pier. With only a couple of days to the pour, the bulge was staying. Further proof that every prior delay will have consequences. You just don't know what they are going to be!


October 24th arrived sunny and dry. The pumper truck and concrete trucks should have no problems getting up the mountain, in fact I'm the first pour of the day for Jeff. Or so I thought until the manager of Centerline concrete showed up at 8:30 am. This is not good. Jeff bailed again with whatever mechanical excuse was the flavor of the day. They just don't want to come up the mountain. Worst still a replacement crew/truck wouldn't be arriving until the afternoon. Leo and the boys to be precise--the Putzmeister, as his truck is called. He's got the putz right. I'm always worried when folks show up wearing shower sandals, it's quite the look down here. I immediately let them know I'm not humping pipe. I'll point when necessary. Leo, who was not Leo as it turns out but his nephew instead, was a likable guy.


The pour by standards was fairly simple. My upper retaining wall, footings and the lower pier and beams. I think it was 20 yards. We poured the footings first and then moved to the lower pier etc. Afterwards we would come back to the walls I had suspended over the footings. By the time we returned, the concrete would have set enough to hold the weight of the fresh concrete inside the wall forms. It's a bold move by a rookie!


Work proceeded as planed. Upper footings, connect about 100 ft of pipe and pour down below. Beams and footings, check. Now the pier. The cornerstone of the whole operation! The piece that pulls it all together, 2x2x8ft. When the concrete filled to about the six foot mark a great whooshing sound was heard as the concrete blew out the bottom, the bottom buried under that mudslide I previously mentioned. Now I had a lake of concrete. After saying bad things about what people do to mothers, I gave the f*k it sign with the wave of my arm and told them to break down the pipe and pour the upper wall. We can't wait for the concrete to set up. The truck has got to pump with another coming up the mountain. The real drag is the pier supports and holds the beams in place which further hold the hillside in place. Now I only have a half filled column with rebar from the beams still showing.

It gets worse.

The truck that had to leave got stuck connected to the pumper when its rear axle froze. Meanwhile there's another truck sitting with a hot load brewing on the spot. Yikes. Not to be outdone, the skies open up and a deluge starts. I'm talking raindrops that hurt. In the confusion over the next 40 minutes of crews scrambling to get the rear axle fixed, Leo forgets all the pipe he has out with concrete still in them and it hardens. Now we have to break down everything into 10 foot sections and pound it out with baby sledges. See you later! Me, I disappear with my damaged elbows back down below and start filling five gallon buckets with the concrete from my lake and pour them back into the pier. Without having a heart attack and before the concrete finally set I raised the interior level back to the six foot mark. At least it was something.

The rain abated about forty five minutes later with everyone having water coming out of their knee high rubber boots. It was not comfortable. Thankfully the walls were poured without incident. What should have been a three hour job took almost seven. Leo tried to have me pay for the extra time. "Yo, Leo, I'm not the pipe with the concrete stuck in it and I didn't break the rear axle." Leo won't be pumping for me again.


It's now going on a year my having stayed with Fran and Roger in Cruz Bay. At the moment I was house sitting again with them up in New York for a couple of weeks. Sleeping with the dogs, I was. My favorite little monsters. The original plan was I would stay in Cruz, house sit etc for three or four months until the electric company put up poles and power . Here we are a year later and Fran had had enough of Roger and me laying around having a good time, at her expense I might add, on several occasions. It definitely worked out for all of us with their being able to take several vacations and me having a place to stay for the seven or so months I was on island. On top of that they refused any rent. It was all I could do to get them to go out to dinner figthing Roger for the check.

They were due back on November 4th and I promised to be in Coral Bay by the 10th.

zoomed in view from the cul de sac

My original intention, and it sits in one of the containers, was to move to the property and live in a three room 18x11 tent resting on a platform. It was a good idea until I experienced a torrential downpour, not to mention I had no level area even remotely approximating 18x11.

Plan B.......

the back side of the newly poured 12ft upper retaining wall......

The way I saw it one wall was already done! That's a 12'x12' platform I'm bolting to the wall. I decided to built a post and beam shack completely bolted and screwed together that will be taken apart at some future date. With screws it's a lot easy to hold things in place with your shoulder etc and put things together while keeping a level on top of a joist as you work.


"Deadwood" comes together

This is the interior view I didn't like. At this point I changed the two main flaps overlooking the valley. By having the flaps swing outward I lost considerable views and light. Not to mention my flaps were 6x4 with reinforcing trim. They were a bear to open plus I had screening problems I could foresee. In the end I left two as they were and changed three others.


So from that I went to this, a 4x12ft picture window with a bigger view.


Altogether, not including rain delays, it took me about 15 days to put it together. Total cost in materials about $2500. Meanwhile I slept in my camper shell on the back of my truck for several nights. It was perfect. I backed it up to the end of the cul de sac and this is what I woke up to every day. Living large by my standards.


Roadhouse blues--Jim Morrison and the Doors
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel
Yeah, we're goin' to the Roadhouse
Gonna have a real Good time
Yeah, in back of the Roadhouse they got some bungalows
Yeah, in back of the Roadhouse they got some bungalows
And that's for the people Who like to go down slow
Let it roll, baby, roll
Let it roll, baby, roll
Let it roll, baby, roll
Let it roll, all night long
Ashen lady, Ashen lady
Give up your vows, give up your vows
Save our city, save our city
Right now
Well, I woke up this morning, I got myself a beer
Yeah, I woke up this morning, and I got myself a beer
The future's uncertain, and the end is always near
Let it roll, baby, roll
Let it roll, baby, roll
Let it roll, baby, roll
Let it roll, all night long
They crossed all the way over to clip the tree--we drive on the opposite side here



This is a very common scene on St John. Well let's put it this way it is not uncommon. I took the photos above and the one below was in one of our local papers, the Tradewinds. Because of the roads here we have the lowest posted speed limit in the US and territories 20mph with no passing allowed anywhere on island. Yes, everyone does 30 and passes on blind turns. In fact you are allowed to drive and drink at the same time. I know what you are thinking. Plus let's not forget you are driving on the left as an added bonus. ( driving on the left with our cars is actually quite brilliant)

Every vehicle on St John is damaged and I mean every vehicle except for mine of course. In the last year alone eight people have died in assorted accidents. Most are work related. Back hoes, concrete trucks etc going over steep cliffs. That's a small track hoe in the water after it slid down the road and went over the cliff. the operator jumped off before it went over.
Two guys in the concrete truck weren't lucky. This is the truck after it was turned it over.It's quite gruesome. In one episode a jeep flipped over backwards going up a steep hill when it lost power. Two young girls were killed. In another a parking brake failed and the vehicle crushed a lady against a retaining wall. The tree trimmer from California lost his life when he tried to jump back into his cherry picker to stop it from going over a wall--it took him with it. The list goes on and on. Per capita this has got to be the deadliest place going. What I can tell you is if you take your eyes off the road for even one second you are risking life and limb even at ten to twenty miles per hour.
Here's another set of photos......



This one I got to see take place...... THAT'S MY TRUCK!!!!!


Tahoe Dave as he is affectionately known, a long time resident, had just returned from a month in Spain where they drive on the right. Myself, I was returning to the love shack via the north shore road, having just finished climbing up a series of steep four wheel drive switchbacks when I crested the hill and started down--max speed at this point 10mph. Sure I saw the headlights coming around the turn at about 30mph but I didn't think they were in my lane! All Tahoe remembers is someone screaming "you stupid motherf..." just before impact. He woke up to the same. WOW, the sound of impact. Now I have in the past t-boned a Camry at 30mph on California street in San Francisco rushing to get to the market open at 5am, but a head on is a whole different breed of cat especially at night. You don't know what you are about to be hit by. It's a life changing event!!!!

By the time of impact I was already stopped having dove for the shoulder. He followed me over there! His instinct had him turn the wrong way. We met headlight to headlight. My cow catcher basically totaled his old car, snapped his seat belt and put his face through his steering wheel. My cursing and swearing ended the minute I saw him and his girl friend stagger out of the car with blood everywhere. What are you going to do. Anyway both vehicles had to be towed as I sat by the side of the road crying in my beer. I called Roger. I didn't have a clue what to do or what the local procedurers were. You are dazed and confused. In fact you are not certain who's fault it is. Your vehicle appears to be on the wrong side of the road. I took pictures as he said and waited for him and the police to show up. Roger ended up driving Dave to the hospital where they couldn't fix his face. He later had to have surgery. Meanwhile I had to find a place to tow my truck to. Dwight, the tow man, suggested the DMV parking lot as it was the weekend.

I moved back into Roger's for a few days--stranded in Cruz Bay. I ended up renting two different jeeps. Each worse than the next.

Next day Dwight and I went down to look at the damage. Aside from being crushed inward about six to eight inches no main engine parts seemed to be broken. Hmmm. Hook up the winch. With that we slowly winched out my entire front end pulling the plastic, yes plastic, radiator away from the fan so it could turn. She started after fooling around with all the cables. Whew. I put the headlights back in with duct tape, cut off all the broken plastic and metal and immediately drove to my insurance company to renew my policy which had recently expired. Who knew! Thank god the accident wasn't my fault. Two days later I got my new 08 sticker at the DMV. Tahoe had insurance and despite the naysayers I got a check for $5400 which went into my last concrete pour. I now have an official St John truck!



The accident happened on November 17th. I didn't really get back to work for another week, what with getting police reports or at least trying to get them. Had to get a couple of estimates etc etc.

some local ruins.......


With the shack sleepable I went about my time taking off all the forms on the upper retaining walls so I could have the drive way retaining wall back filled and have the driveway scupltured so it would be useable getting me down the hill closer to the cottage.

Edwin showed up a couple of days later. Originlly he said it would be three weeks. We started getting a lot of rain and track hoes don't work when it's wet--they start sliding and there's nothing that can stop them.

When he got to the bottom of the driveway after back filling the wall I had him turn left and continue very percariously down the hill to the cottage.


Here I had him dress up the previous work that had been done but not to my liking. Instead of having one tall wall I have chosen to break it into two. One eight footer, a landscape shelf and finally an upper 4 footer. Should look pretty good. Also an eight foot wall is a whole lot easier to build. In addition I had him dig the footings for the eight foot retaining wall, zig zagging to save the palm tree. It's a little strange but I'll make it work. When you are using the outdoor shower and look up you will see the palm.


To lessen the steepness of the driveway Edwin lowered the top another 3-4 feet. As you can see the old road was originally at the bottom of the black plastic. Ultimately I will be adding another four feet to the driveway retaining wall bringing it to 16 feet further lessening the steepness---lower the top and raise the bottom. It works.

The remaining hours were spent going up and down the driveway pounding it down. Total time spent on everything was 10 hours at $165 an hour.
Finally the long awaited moment. Truth is, I was afraid to go down and get stuck. Edwin laughed as he roared down the driveway in an old beater Explorer. He even stopped half way up to rub it in! But my fear is well placed. If I get stuck on this mountain it could be a long time before I'm freed.


It's now the end of November. I jumped down to the lower patio and started putting up the forms for a small wall running along side the house.

What a pain in the ass. The footings were anything but level, as a result of me forgetting to trowel them when I was dealing with the pier blow out. Then the rains came back. None of my forms lined up etc etc. Doing it alone made it near impossible. I kind of punted as there was no concrete on island and my road up the mountain was no longer passeable had there been any. Making matters worse a tropical depression that they thought was going to be become a hurricane passed to the south of us over St Croix. Massive rains and sustained 45-55mph winds lasted almost a week. Jungle debris everywhere. Limbs and branches covered the ground. Basically it wasn't safe to go out on the property. In fact on a day I was having a delivery of whalers I had bought, an enormus tree snapped in half narrowingly missing a truck. It snapped in half because, as it turns out, it was hollow. The occupants were very pissed. As we went to look, thousands and thousands of bees made for us or so we thought. When you see a swarm the size of a car moving in your direction you don't stand and calculate the distance. Regretably there were witnesses and they happily enacted our shrieking and running whenever we showed up at the bar.
A couple of days later a few Dominicans showed up, created some smoke and made off with a five gllon bucket of honeycomb.

Hunkered down trying to prevent mudslides.
Some wild goats show up.
These guys are not to be messed with.

Whenever the weather cleared I dropped a few trees to open up the view.


As you can see Santa lives in Coral Bay and works as a plumber in the off season. The beard is real.

I'm going home for Christmas and the shack is buttoned up for the next three weeks. I left on December 18th planning on returning January 8th.


This time I was on island for only two months.

My first full year of hurricanes

Doing hard time

3/4 actual size....

I just had the nightmare event. Blogger is supposed to save drafts as you go along. I hit the wrong key and an afternoon of typing and pics went into the void. It starts with an F and ends with a K!

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah. Why don't I update more often? Exhaustion. Generally I work, drive home, sometimes via the beach and crash. Most of the time I don't even have the energy to make myself some food outside of a sandwich at best. The upside, I've lost more than 20lbs of that "fine wine/martini belly" I had worked so hard to get. Ten more pounds and I'll be dangerous! I usually leave Cruz Bay about 7:30, late by island standards, and return around 5pm. I get up the mountain by 8:30am. I'm able to start later than most (7am) because I'm up at 1000ft and I left all the giant trees. Virtually my entire work area is shaded for most of the day. When its not I work somewhere else. Plus, it's easy to relax now. In July I got a satellite feed from St Thomas and I set up a wi-fi router and we have a pretty good wireless internet connection around the house. It's not DSL but no complaints from here at $49/month. The only problem is staying awake long enough to read the news and review the stock market. Saving the world has been put on the back burner for now!

a road side beach on the way home...step out of the truck and walk in

When I got back to St John at the end of June, I returned to a completed pour on the lower level. All and all, things went well as I had reported last time. The big problem from a labor point of view was all the spilt concrete up against the forms making their removal a bunch of needless work. Until I was able to rent a jack hammer I went at it with a 14lb sledge for a few days cursing the whole time. Grueling to say the least. In hindsight I should have just gone to the beach while I waited the week to get the hammer from rental company. You learn by doing. I'm not doing that again. The jack hammer took about four or five hours. The only hard part was hauling it up and down the hill.

the best $75 rental I have made so far....

Anyway, Mike and crew had originally said/thought they would take all the forms down and stack the 2x4's and plywood while also returning the rented whalers. Well, you guessed it, it wasn't done by the time I got back. I told Mike to forget it, I would do it. Nothing against Mike, I'm just at the bottom of his work list. Originally he signed up to do just the foundation. The upside is that I save $85 an hour I would have had to pay the crew. The downside, the job takes a whole lot longer. I set about doing it right after I got back.

the site as I found it....under the garbage can, in front of the blue tarp, you can see a square footing. That is the column footing that moved an inch forward causing all kinds of problems as you will see later....

I forget how long it actually took me, but it was about three weeks. I went at it with a 4lb baby sledge and a pick after removing all the spilt concrete. Pound the flat end of the pick behind the plywood and use the handle for leverage to pry the ply loose from the concrete. Three or four spots around the primeter and you are good to go. Most of the time is went reasonably well. The only real problem was there was a lot of it. About seventy full sheets and forty or so half pieces, not to mention first taking off the 1600 or more whalers. Break down the 300 or more 2x4's and pile them, neatly of course, on top of the cistern. Then carry the plywood behind the foundation to be hoisted out at a later date. No way I was going to boost those on top. I may be mad but I am not insane yet. Things moved along until about the ninth or tenth day. I woke up one morning and I could not touch the top of my head with either arm. Oh my god, the pain in my elbows. Apparently that little baby sledge was killing me. I mean you feel it everyday but then you just switch arms. It's no big deal or so I thought. Well, I'm almost three months down the road and I can finally wash the back of my neck and lift up my coffee cup with one hand!

the forms are still up on the inside....

I finished breaking down the forms with two hands for every task. It was the only way. Thankfully the only movement that was excruciating was a hammer motion. Every one says I have an extreme case of tennis elbow. Ace bandage is making a living off me. I took a week off.

I broke the handles on the hammer, baby sledge and two shovels not shown.....

Generally I work seven days a week putting in about seven hours a day. I putz a little on the weekends thinking it all through while I work. Net net, I probably do 40 hard ones per week. If I have to go to St. Thomas (Home Depot) I go on Sundays, usually about once a month.

a passenger ferry makes for St Thomas....

Next on the agenda was building the retaining wall on top of the eight foot base wall we had already poured. Of course I thought it was no big deal, what with it only being four feet high. We could use the plywood on its side and have at it. I said we because I thought Mike and crew would be part of the process. After a week I gave up on him. It was all I could do to have him show up to "shoot" the bolts on cottage. Shoot the bolts? Set up a surveyors level and make sure every bolt around the house was set to the same level so when I put up my steel columns they would all be at the same height. There are other ways to do it but this is the easiest.

Building retaining walls is fairly straightforward when you have a helper. Doing it alone is a whole other treat. I know, I know I should get a helper. That's for another discussion. Trust me, I ran a two man crew for many years. I needed to do this alone if for no other reason than to learn everything that was necessary. You learn every trick in the book by doing it yourself. Yes, it takes longer but not twice as long. There's a lot of standing around when you have a crew, even if it's just one other person. With all the digging and trenching it probably took me another three weeks to put up about 70 feet of winding retaining wall, ranging from four feet to eight feet. Don't forget that includes all of the # 5 rebar, cut and bent.

You line up all the snap ties keeping pressure on two sheets of 3/4 inch ply standing on some flimsy scaffolding and see how long it takes you! Plus, don't forget, you don't have any elbows to speak of.

I added another six feet to this segment.....

Next waterproofing the foundation walls.

Then moving six yards of gravel down the hill to put in my drains before back filling the foundation/lower floor. The task. Move the gravel about 150 feet down a makeshift galvanized luge run after digging a small trench around the perimeter of the foundation.

the luge run....
It's not as easy as you think even if it is very steep. Gravel finds a way to stop even on slick galvanized sheets! Tweaking, tweaking and more tweaking. Three days of tweaking. Up and down the mountain breaking up gravel log jams. Slipping and sliding until help arrived. Denise rode to the rescue. In the old days they would have said the coolie labor has arrived!

that pile originally filled both sheets of plywood three feet high....

We rented a small cottage lower down the mountain above Coral Bay below our property.

Denise stayed nine days three of which were spent shoveling gravel onto the luge run at exactly right amount so that it would not clog the chute except at the very bottom where I shoveled it out of the way. What a god send that Denise showed up. I took a few days off and we putzed about. Anything to help my elbows. Denise left and returned to SF.

All the work to date was the build up to what I was putting off. The deck pier and cement beams that had to go on the lower level. Originally I thought I would address the lower deck slab after the cottage was almost livable. The work as planned was to pour the three individual footings, 4x4x3, for the columns that would support the deck above. We poured these with the walls. The bad news, the last pier on compacted fill moved about one inch forward after a monster series of rain storms. Previously it was thought that the 20 ton cat would provide enough compaction to allow for this base footing. We are talking about being on about three feet of fill. Hmmm.

Plan B.

I was not looking forward to this. After getting confirming advice, the obvious had to be done. I had to sink a pier at the outer edge of the patio, where there was fill, down to terra firma and run beams along the perimeter to stabilize the entire area--fill or no fill. Oh man. In a perfect world the earlier advice I had gotten would have said "put in a pier while the big cat was doing the excavation". Ten minutes to make the hole and dig the footings. Now. Whew. It's not possible to get a big machine back down there, not to mention the additional cost of another delivery ($500). Plus the scheduling. You don't just call someone up and they show up. You get in line, usually a long line.

a frigate bird along with a "laughing" seagull...

The only solution was a small excavator. They have them, running about five feet wide. But I needed one with steel tracks. Most have rubber which can't make it up and down our property. It took about a week but I found three, two on St Thomas. The bids were all over the place from $1500 to $2200 for about a day's work or so they said. I am so depressed. I can't do it by hand, it would kill me!

I'm not sure how I found out while I was crying in my coffee, but Elvis, where I have some steel etc stored, was said to have a small steel tracked excavator. He did, at $95/hour plus delivery. Of course this being St John it would not be available for about a week or so. Who cares! I could spend the week cleaning out and patching the inside of one of the cisterns getting it ready for the thoroseal coats. Also I had to remove everything that would be in the way of the machine coming down the hill and squeezing its way around back. The timing is working. I should have plenty of time to get all my work done before I return to San Francisco on October 6th--including pouring all the concrete.

Meanwhile I overheard a conversation on the project above me while I was eating lunch. They had "too much dirt for too little hole". Oh really! I have got plenty of hole! The already existing driveway retaining wall could take everything they have and more. I told them that they could move all the fill onto our property at the top of the driveway on their dime. It saves them a lot of money. Otherwise they would have to hire dump trucks, find and pay someone to dump their fill. At the same time I also negotiated with the cat operator to move the fill down to back fill my retaining wall and then continue further down and back fill the foundation. Besides the good timing, I save on a delivery charge of $500 because the machine was already there. I dropped everything I was doing and spent the next three days dismantling the job site to make room for the big machine. Lumber, steel, water tanks, everything had to be moved. I was already going to do some of this for Elvis's machine. The rest of the time I spent directing the excavation/saving trees. Perfect timing.

The next day they spent moving the fill with a backhoe to the top of the driveway. You can see it in the corner of the this picture when the big cat showed up.

moving the fill down to the retaining wall....

Turning and moving down to excavate and back fill the foundation. You can see some of the plywood I had him hoist out of the hole before back filling started.

Rather than have one tall retaining wall we cut a shelf in. At the base of this wall will be the small wading pool. Landscaping on the top shelf.

the front yard....with the front door to be in the lower right.

Total cost $800, five hours at $160. Free fill and no delivery, sweet.

The following week Elvis showed up. Three and half hours later the work was done--$750 including delivery. Actually he had to come back one more time after I determined we had to go deeper when I was squaring up the hole--another $190. Now the hard part. Figuring out how to build it all, alone!

I left part of the retaining wall unfinished so he could get his machine down.

It looks ugly! I had to have plenty of plywood as a roadbed so that he could go over what he had previously done to make the hole deeper. Plus attempting to protect the bolts in the original footings for the deck columns. Ultimately with machine and by hand I went down about nine feet for the pier.

The work begins.

It took about a day to square up the hole and dig it down about two more feet. I put a four foot base to the pier. The pier itself is 2x2.


I squared everything to the existing foundation. Everything was done with 16' 2x4's. Don't forget I'm also the dumb end of the tape. Net, net everything came within a 1/4". Good enough for government work. Even if it hadn't turned out I could square it again when I pour the slab. Plum bobs and levels rule!

This is a good picture of the scope of the work. The pier is under the plastic tarp. It's at that corner, well actually in about four feet, where the footing for a deck column moved one inch. The covered deck is eight feet wide with the patio extending another four and half out to the forms and pier that I built.

This will be the side patio with no overhead deck. Lots of sun to dry out the place after heavy tropical rains.

That's all #5 rebar. Counting the cottage and retaining walls I have used about 550 20' bars. My Dewalt grinder has earned its keep. It has made at least 1500 cuts. By using stirrups in these 10" wide, two foot high footings I'm attempting to have a steel/concrete beam running the outside perimeter. Six bars and a 14"x5" stirrup every six inches. I had to build it all in place. No way I could lift six 20' lengths and stirrups and put it in the footing. What a pain in the ass to assemble in place. Almost three days for sixty feet. My logic, if the deck is going to sink I want it all to sink the same amount everywhere. It is not going to move away from the building as the original column footing did because when I pour the five/six inch deck slab I'll epoxy my rebar into the foundation slab every foot. That deck may go down but it is not going out. A professional would probably tell me I wasted my time.

I'll be pouring all the concrete to five or so inches short of the top of the forms. That way I'll only take down the inside of the forms on the patio and the upper retaining walls leaving the outside forms still up. This way I won't have to build new forms for the slab. I put a level line all around the inside to approximate the right level. After the pour while it is still wet I'll stick new rebar in every foot to tie it later to the slab. I'm also pouring the pier and its footing at the same time. Same with parts of the retaining wall. It's just such a pain to get a pumper truck and a concrete truck up the mountain. Not to mention the work and expense of bringing down 150' of pipe for pumping the concrete.

Now, the wait for the concrete. I'm scheduled for Wednesday October 3rd. I leave for SF the following Saturday. I could not get it sooner because Majestic ran out of concrete. Centerline Concrete said they could squeeze me in for my 21 yards the following week on Wednesday.

I hide under this during the down pours and to get a break from the sun. This is the one area where there is no shade. The hurricane season brings some heavy rains. The biggest drawback is it turns the site into a three, four day quagmire. Ankle deep mud. Slipping and sliding, falling on your ass at all time. Digging trenches etc is doing hard time. I have virtually no level ground. It's everything to keep from being speared by the rebar. Carrying 3/4 inch sheets of plywood is always entertaining, up or down the hills. My poor feet. One pair of boots has already rotted off. I keep the mosquitoes in check by running my pump after every hard rain draining any standing water. Clorox does the rest.

I had to wake this guy up when I needed my plank, totally docile....

I have spent a lot of time in the tropics starting all the way back in the early seventies. On land and sailing across the seas. I have a routine. It has worked flawlessly everywhere except for a night spent sleeping on a beach in French Polynesia on Moorea. That night a six-inch centipede crawled under me and later bit me on the back of my neck. Despite being sound of sleep it was like bolt of ligthning struck me. Blind as a bat I started smashing everything around me after I saw him move. The rage and the pain are not expressable. To this day if I see a centipede I kill it as pay back. The next morning with my head and neck throbbing, I stood up still cursing and swearing, and there low and behold was that little monster sleeping very comfortably in his original curled up position under where my neck had just been. I pulverized him. Say hello to the other time my routine failed.

This sucker crawled into my wet leather glove into the thumb hole. Like I said, I have a routine. With gloves, I twist them as if I were wringing them out. Which in this case I was, the sweat makes them feel like drenched rags. Anyway, twist away. Don't ask me how he survived, but survive he did. Trust me when I tell you this, the folks that say their sting is like a bee have never been stung by a scorpion. I know bees and wasps. I have had occassions where I have been seen running out of the woods with whole hives after me. One time Helen Dunn was vacuuming when I ran into her house trying to escape. Yup, she vacuumed them off me. I have been bit by more than 20 or 30 bees at the same time, so take my word for it when I tell you that the scorpion above is NOTHING like a bee sting. When I suck my hand in the glove all I could think was, whatever did that, if it does it again it will kill me. I kid you not, the pain was so incredibly instant that my heart skipped a beat. It was all I could do to just get the glove off. My thumb went instantly numb with a hammer like throbbing. I couldn't breath right. And then, like the centipede before, revenge set in. Picking up the glove, there he was comfortably nestled into the thumb slot. It actually took a lot to kill him. They are tough little creatures.


these are my wards when Roger and Fran go off island....they found the mud hole....

I spent the week waiting for concrete by finishing everything and spending time on the site nearby where they are in the stucco stage. A crew from Haiti and the Dominican Republic were making short work of it. Fast and good. I learned every secret I could. I spent hours watching and speaking spanglish with them. Products and techniques. Names and numbers. I can definitely put up the first two coats myself. A big money saver. Then I can get a couple of these guys on a weekend to put up the finish coat. As some payback, I taught the painter everything he didn't know.

If your wondering if all this work is worth it, it is. The best price on St John for poured concrete, forms, labor, the whole task is about $850 a cubic yard. To date we will have poured 91 yards for about 1/3 of that price. It takes me longer but the savings are there. All those containers I brought from Florida continue to pay off.

The excitement builds as my concrete should be coming in two days. There's something final about concrete. A stage is completed and a hurricance can't blow away three months of work.

Yes, you guessed it, the phone rang. Jeff, the pump truck operator broke down trying to get to another job. He's not sure if the axle will be repaired by Wednesday, maybe by Friday. He has the only truck available that makes the switchback turn coming up the mountain. Thrusday, Centerline concrete calls to tell me they are also now out of concrete. The barge from Puerto Rico has been delayed. There will be no concrete with no date certain. I'm getting on the plane. I rebooked the concrete for the 24th.

Why the pictures of the interior of the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas?

remember that's the interior....

That's a whole other story of cancelled plans. Anyway it led to me being stranded in Vegas overnight waiting for a flight to SF.

POKER!!!! a whole night of Texas hold'em. I pulled a 44 hour shift-- St John, Vegas on to SF. Who's better then me. Denise knew I was up to no good, she just didn't know what. I made enough to cover food, drink, taxis, tips etc and had $7.50 left over. Down to the felt as usual!

Finally, this entry is done. I get on a plane this Saturday to go back to the jungle.